I Won The Nobel Prize

Marilena Demian
I don't know why they don't get it. I want to be left alone. I'm a rolling stone, I knocked on Heaven's Gate after the accident, I don't want to be a false prophet. It's no use Joan and Bruce telling me there's still room for honours, no use Bill and Barack hanging medals around my neck, I barely managed to help John and Yoko out of trouble. I don't collect awards; their purpose is blowin' in the wind. I'm playing tonight in Las Vegas, then I'll give myself a couple of weeks before I can explain how amazed I was that they gave me that Nobel.

Marina Borzescu
The award committee was in deadlock. One of the members proposed that Sisyphus be chosen. One gentleman retorted: no, this repetitive and compulsive character? He's been carrying the boulder of mankind for so long, the other continued, with the money he receives he will modernize the boulder transport technology, he will complete his work. They sent me to bring the news. Sisyphus was in full charge, when he heard the news, he stubbornly refused the prize. He had no intention of changing the destiny of mankind, and besides, the new technologies did not inspire him with confidence.

Ionuț Tuhoarcă
Ah, Tuțica, daughter of November, you said if I took you to Mamaia, I'd have eyes bluer than Nichita's. That I'd make Bacovia cry. That I'd be more delusional than Eminovici and Veronica put together. That I'll fight Caragiale in comic parables. That I'll teach Picasso trigonometry. That I'm going to teach Eliade in kindergarten. Screw up Bukowski with my ideas. Instead, I'm sitting with my white crutches, in this blue dump, counting these pink buds. Tuțica, girl, don't tell me I ain't getting the Nobel this year either.

(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / 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 July 2023, the group has 11,540 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, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

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