Ismail, the old sailor, had also set up a small antique shop in the tavern he owned by the sea. I used to like to pick up an old book and browse through it with rapt attention while sipping a glass of rum, listening, amused, to the people at the tables nearby. Each had a story, each was a tiny universe, each represented another world. I spent some fascinating nights in Ismail's shop. With patience, I managed to gather enough adventures for the novel I was working on:
Toate pânzele sus ("All Sails Up").
(Translated by Andreea Grințescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)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 April 2022, the group has 8,175 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, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
