The Little Gatsby

Known in his world as a genuine gentleman, even if he had a precarious social situation. He used to throw extravagant parties, hoping that the girl he had once met at the crossroad while washing the windshields would come to one of them. He'd make toasts with cheese, salami, and red onions. He would even have a Mirabelle plum brandy, nicely put near the lightbulb carefully coloured with nail polish. Even if nobody believed him, he was the Great Gicanu, a millionaire in old leis with a gelled hairdo. Always waiting for love.

(Translated by Alexandr Cotar / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Professor Nadina Vişan)


Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In January 2021, the group has 3.000 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

*Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.