Short stories
One Minute Stories
Egyperces novellák
István Örkény · 1968
Synopsis
Short stories of one or two pages, sometimes of a few lines, grotesque, absurd, often funny, which close on an unexpected twist. Some pass themselves off as a news item, an official notice or a survey before going off the rails: a cannery opens a workshop to reconstitute rabbits, a dead woman rises when her tombstone collapses. The title is part of the text and sharpens the twist. At the head, a “Mode d'emploi” promises the reader to save them time and recommends that they look closely at the titles.
Context
The collection appeared in 1968 from Magvető, with drawings by László Réber; the author later took its texts into a larger collection, and the 1984 edition, prepared by his widow, Zsuzsa Radnóti, adds pieces that had remained in journals or in manuscript. The form is held to be a genre in its own right, taken up by other Hungarian writers, from György Spiró to Miklós Vámos. The grotesque serves there to say what censorship did not allow to be said openly.
Who it is for
Texts of a page or a few lines, to be read in any order, in the time it takes to boil an egg; translated into French and into English as selections of texts.
Prizes and reception
The best known and best loved book of its author, regarded as the birth certificate of a literary genre.
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