The hideous so-called "Golden Age", endless queues for food, stomachs rumbling with hunger, agricultural labour in the fields for the working class, birthday parades, military uniforms, folk costumes, roaring odes to the ruling clique, tribute ploughmen in national costumes, Radio Free Europe illegally listened, young people rallying, deadly bullets on the streets and sidewalks, panic, screams, great confusion, release from the tyrant by execution. I never thought we'd learn how to hate.
(Translated by Medeea Alexandra Stan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited 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 January 2023, the group has 10,220 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. 
