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Flamingos in the Ashtray: 25 Bizarro Short Stories
Surreal. Savage. And cinematic. Flamingos in the Ashtray is the collection of some truly weird stories by Zoltán Komor, a young Hungarian author, who lately began to translate his works into English and has published them in several literary magazines.
Discover a world, where everything is possible:
A young man while sipping his tea in the morning, finds a small, two inch long naked female corpse on the bottom of the cup, becomes a killer suspect, and later a judge reads out his verdict from the tea leaves.
A girl gets raped by a hunter, and later gives birth to a wounded deer with bullets in its body that she then has to protect from her hungry parents.
A boy's head turns into microphone, so when his girlfriend whispers her secrets into his ear, her words echoes through the city.
In this strange world, an old veteran discovers tiny enemy soldiers in the sugar bowl, and the dentist has a small garden where he plants the pulled out teeth like they were seeds and plastic horses grown from them, which he can sell for funfairs. (The only problem is, when children ride these painted steeds, their small teeth begin to rot with every round.)
Strange events take place in the author's homeland too, where evil horses from the sky terrorizes the people of a small Hungarian village, and an old witch turns into a pork on a pig slaughter after putting the dead animal's teeth into her mouth.
Moving to foreign lands, some weird western pushes the book slightly into dark pulp territory. Meet Necrosheriff, the decaying corpse, shooting scavenger beetles from his gun; an old phonograph regurgitates burial-music, as he rides into the sunset – girls begin to shake from pleasure from seeing the never wilting cadaveric rigidness. Or meet the fat Chickenbone Mary, who decides to build herself a husband from chicken bones.
And also, there's the shoeshine boy from the title giving story, who tries to make a living by stealing his clients feet in a mad, dystopian city, where poor people are fed by a helicopter with the dead animals from the zoo, the strippers are so despaired, that they even take of their flesh and the devil rides a bus with electric chairs.
So take a seat. Otherwise you are blocking the drivers view.
Discover a world, where everything is possible:
A young man while sipping his tea in the morning, finds a small, two inch long naked female corpse on the bottom of the cup, becomes a killer suspect, and later a judge reads out his verdict from the tea leaves.
A girl gets raped by a hunter, and later gives birth to a wounded deer with bullets in its body that she then has to protect from her hungry parents.
A boy's head turns into microphone, so when his girlfriend whispers her secrets into his ear, her words echoes through the city.
In this strange world, an old veteran discovers tiny enemy soldiers in the sugar bowl, and the dentist has a small garden where he plants the pulled out teeth like they were seeds and plastic horses grown from them, which he can sell for funfairs. (The only problem is, when children ride these painted steeds, their small teeth begin to rot with every round.)
Strange events take place in the author's homeland too, where evil horses from the sky terrorizes the people of a small Hungarian village, and an old witch turns into a pork on a pig slaughter after putting the dead animal's teeth into her mouth.
Moving to foreign lands, some weird western pushes the book slightly into dark pulp territory. Meet Necrosheriff, the decaying corpse, shooting scavenger beetles from his gun; an old phonograph regurgitates burial-music, as he rides into the sunset – girls begin to shake from pleasure from seeing the never wilting cadaveric rigidness. Or meet the fat Chickenbone Mary, who decides to build herself a husband from chicken bones.
And also, there's the shoeshine boy from the title giving story, who tries to make a living by stealing his clients feet in a mad, dystopian city, where poor people are fed by a helicopter with the dead animals from the zoo, the strippers are so despaired, that they even take of their flesh and the devil rides a bus with electric chairs.
So take a seat. Otherwise you are blocking the drivers view.
- GenresBizarro Fiction
82 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 6, 2014
5 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Zoltan Komor
40 books39 followersZoltán Komor was born in June 14, 1986 and lives in Nyíregyháza, Hungary. He writes surreal short stories and published in several literary magazines (Wilderness House Literary Review; Drabblecast; The Phantom Drift; Gone Lawn; Bizarro Central; Caliban Online; Bizarrocast; Thrice Fiction Magazine; The Missing Slate; The Gap-Toothed Madness; Kafka Review, etc.) and anthologies (Unity, Volume 1: A Magical Realism Charity Anthology benefiting Doctors without Borders; The Horror Collection: Emerald Edition, etc.).
His first English book, titled Flamingos in the Ashtray: 25 Bizarro Short Stories, was released by Burning Bulb Publishing in 2014, his second English book, titled Tumour-djinn was released by MorbidbookS in the same year, and his third collection, Turdmummy was released by StrangeHouse Books in 2016.
In 2020 his short story titled "Mall-Head" won The Monolith Prize in Hungary.
His first English book, titled Flamingos in the Ashtray: 25 Bizarro Short Stories, was released by Burning Bulb Publishing in 2014, his second English book, titled Tumour-djinn was released by MorbidbookS in the same year, and his third collection, Turdmummy was released by StrangeHouse Books in 2016.
In 2020 his short story titled "Mall-Head" won The Monolith Prize in Hungary.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 30, 2015
This is a great collection of really short fictions by a brand new talent from Hungary. Bizarro is a largely an American phenomenon at this point, with a few authors scattered in other former British Imperial dominions, but it is very refreshing to see a new take from a guy whose country doesn't really have a Bizarro tradition at this point. He's blazing a trail in the former Eastern Bloc, and that's very promising.
The stories contained in Flamingos in the Ashtray are truly weird. Sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always unsettlingly bizarre. I'd recommend this to fans of Revert, Prunty, D.H. Wilson, and Fracalossy, or fans of generally surreal absurdism.
A promising debut! Can't wait for his next one!
The stories contained in Flamingos in the Ashtray are truly weird. Sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always unsettlingly bizarre. I'd recommend this to fans of Revert, Prunty, D.H. Wilson, and Fracalossy, or fans of generally surreal absurdism.
A promising debut! Can't wait for his next one!
September 3, 2014
A grand work. A writer I want to read more from.
June 5, 2018
I particularly liked the story of microphone head boy and the tiny plane with tourists. First encounter into Bizarro genre and liked it.
January 4, 2025
If Tom Waits wrote bizarro fiction, it would read like Flamingos in the Ashtray. Zolton Komor is pretty great.
October 25, 2014
Flamingos in the Ashtray is fun and thought-provoking, focusing heavily on abstractions and imagery, with narratives that are downright break-neck, and mind-bending.
Essentially, these stories are modern, irrealist fairy tales. From stories like Chicken-Bulbs, about (among other things) a little girl with a door in her mouth, who wants to find her true love behind that oral passage, Chickenbone Mary about (among other things) a woman who only gets excited by chicken meat, but yearns for a husband...So, guess what she does? Necrosheriff was a great irrealist Parable about (among other things) a dead sheriff that won't dismount his horse. These stories are flash fiction pieces, for the most part, but there is enough sub-text, layers, and poetic lines that I found myself rereading stories, two and three times.
I first discovered Zoltán Komor over on Bizarrocentral's Flash Fiction Fridays with the story, Spell of the Game (included in this collection), and was excited to read this collection, and will hopefully be reading more from Komor in the years to come.
If you like Wol-vriey, Douglas Hackle, Bradley Sands, D. Harlan Wilson (among others) you will love this book.
Essentially, these stories are modern, irrealist fairy tales. From stories like Chicken-Bulbs, about (among other things) a little girl with a door in her mouth, who wants to find her true love behind that oral passage, Chickenbone Mary about (among other things) a woman who only gets excited by chicken meat, but yearns for a husband...So, guess what she does? Necrosheriff was a great irrealist Parable about (among other things) a dead sheriff that won't dismount his horse. These stories are flash fiction pieces, for the most part, but there is enough sub-text, layers, and poetic lines that I found myself rereading stories, two and three times.
I first discovered Zoltán Komor over on Bizarrocentral's Flash Fiction Fridays with the story, Spell of the Game (included in this collection), and was excited to read this collection, and will hopefully be reading more from Komor in the years to come.
If you like Wol-vriey, Douglas Hackle, Bradley Sands, D. Harlan Wilson (among others) you will love this book.
July 30, 2015
Flamingos in the Ashtray is the first bizarro fiction I've ever had the pleasure to stumble upon, and I have to admit that I am hooked. What an amazingly haunting collection of short stories, especially Necrosheriff (my personal favorite)
I can't wait to read Zoltan's next book.
I can't wait to read Zoltan's next book.
November 10, 2015
Colorful, funny, odd and entertaining. My favorites:
Chicken Bulbs
Flamingos in the Ashtray
Pillow-Pyre
Chickenbone Mary
The Great Washing Day
Spell of the Game
Chicken Bulbs
Flamingos in the Ashtray
Pillow-Pyre
Chickenbone Mary
The Great Washing Day
Spell of the Game
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews