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Official Statement by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, from One Minute Stories, by István Örkény

Thanks to a long and heated debate championed by the members of our Society, the Rabbit Stew and Fish Soup Plant has just inaugurated a new workshop dedicated to opening the newly sealed tins.

At the new workshop which is called The Can Opener, the newly canned tins of rabbit stew and fish soup are reopened, drained of liquid, and the chunks of meat and fish are reconstituted and taken back to their original habitat, where they are released.

We herewith wish to express our sincere gratitude to the management of the Rabbit Stew and Fish Soup Plant, who have at last come to understand the true meaning of humanitarianism.


Nearly sixty short short stories are told in the space of the 120-some pages of István Örkény’s One Minute Stories (and as many more in its sequel, More One Minute Stories). Some are as much as three pages long; others fewer than three sentences long.

Most of Örkény’s pieces are closer to jokes or pared-down fables than short stories. “Life Should Be So Simple,” for example, is just a six-item list:

  1. Remove fire extinguisher from bracket
  2. Open valve
  3. Approach source of fire
  4. Extinguish fire
  5. Close valve
  6. Replace extinguisher on bracket

“Official government report published in the wake of the triumph of the principles of communism” is merely the statement, “According to a recent statement by government spokesman Károly K. Károly, István Balogh, Sr., stable boy at the Bábolna State Farmers Co-operative, has just started his regular yearly vacation.” Fortunately, the publishers let us in on the joke with a footnote explaining that, “The Hungarian Communist party’s daily newspaper, Népszabadság, every year announced, Kádár János, the First Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Worker’s Party started his regular yearly vacation.”

A fair number of the items in One Minute Stories have a similar flavor of being the sort of joke that takes having lived in Hungary under Communist rule for a decade or two to fully appreciate. I was reminded several times of the little stories that Austrian writer Karl Kraus wrote to mock the Nazis and other forms of authoritarianism. Still, anyone with a taste for sly satirical or absurdist humor can enjoy these amuse-bouches. And, as Örkény points out in his “Handling Instructions,” “They also have the added advantage of saving us time. While the soft-boiled egg is boiling or the number you are dialing answers (provided it is not engaged, of course) you have ample time to read one of these short stories….”

You can find more selections of Örkény’s one-minute stories here, here, and on the English portion of his commemorative website here.


One Minute Stories and More One Minute Stories, by István Örkény, both translated by Judith Sollosy
Budapest, Hungary: Corvina Books, Ltd., 2001 and 2006

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