Release date is 2026-01-22

Megállt az óra -- Az utolsó dereglye -- A vén zsibárús szerencséje -- A síró ember meg a nevető ember -- Az erdei ház -- A sorsfolyó -- A siker.

Albert László from page images generously made available by the Hungarian Electronic Library

“Megállt az óra” by Cécile Tormay is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. Blending lyrical realism with historical reverie and stark allegory, it contemplates a war-broken Budapest, the pull of memory, and the moral hazards of a shaken society. Rather than a single protagonist, the pieces follow shifting observers and castaways who seek meaning in fog, chapels, salons, and storms. Time halted, refuge in the past, and human cruelty under strain are recurring themes.

The opening of this collection begins with a brief authorial prelude admitting how hard it is to “tell stories” while the world’s horrors and the city’s recent traumas still throb in memory. In the title story, a narrator wanders through a fog-bound Budapest of beggars and war maimed men, flees into the Rókus chapel, and slips into a vision of old Pest: guilds and lamp-lit streets, a bustling inn, a barber’s shop, gate restrictions, and a music-filled salon where she is taken for an ancestor and glimpses a tender young love—until carriage bells dissolve the spell and she returns to modern noise and unrest. Next, The Last Barge shifts to a brutal shipwreck: a final lifeboat hacks away the drowning, a distant vessel sails past, calm turns to stifling heat, thirst breeds frenzy, and the survivors at last destroy one another—an unflinching allegory of desperation and moral collapse. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Budapest: Magyar Irodalmi Társaság, 1924