Hostage of Stupidity
A mirror held up to an age in which noise replaces thought, slogans replace responsibility, and beautifully packaged nonsense begins to look like common sense.
Discover the bookFiction · Essays · Quiet satire
Alex Buday
The world has never suffered from a shortage of explanations. Only, occasionally, from an excess of confidence in them.
Stories about memory, history and the private cost of public events—alongside essays for a world that keeps confusing slogans with truth.
Writing without illusions.Discover the work
About the writer
Behind the words,
a certain way of looking.
Some stories begin with history. Others with a headline, a border, or the peculiar confidence of someone who has not yet realised they are mistaken. The interesting part is usually what they have in common.
Alex Buday is a Central European writer of fiction, essays and literary satire. His work explores memory, history and the private cost of public events—along with the illusions people build to make power, progress and everyday absurdity feel reassuringly normal.
His fiction is shaped by borders, silence and the unfinished histories of Central Europe. His essays move through politics, culture, technology and human nature with a quiet irony and a persistent suspicion of easy answers.
He is the founder and editor of Illusions Not Included (INI), an independent multilingual literary publication. Across books, stories and shorter reflections, the same question keeps returning: what remains when the official explanation has finished speaking?
Selected writing
Things we tell
ourselves.
Stories, essays and satire about the assumptions we rarely notice until they begin running the world.
01
Read on INI 02
Read on INI 03
Read on INI 04
Read on INI 05
Read on INI 06
Read on INI
Browse all writing on INI INI · Free to read
Where Water Is Sold at the Price of Gold…
A glass of tap water used to be a gesture. Now it can be treated as lost revenue. What happens when the most ordinary human need is repackaged, renamed and quietly removed from the list of ordinary choices? A small café encounter becomes a lesson in how easily necessity can be turned into premium experience — complete with branding, discomfort and a bill. Because sometimes the luxury is not what they sell you. It is being allowed to choose the ordinary.
Any Resemblance to Humans Is Intentional · Paid writing
The Bird of Freedom, Locked Inside a Coat of Arms…
The eagle never asked to become a symbol of freedom. It simply flew. We were the ones who gave it meaning, placed it on flags and seals, surrounded it with power — and eventually discovered that freedom is much easier to admire once it has been properly framed, approved, and displayed. The bird remained free. The symbol was another matter.
INI · Free to read
The Search Engine Eventually Found Us…
Google began with a simple promise: help us find the world. It worked remarkably well. Then, search by search, the system learned what we wanted, where we went, what held our attention — and eventually what might interest us before we had thought to ask. The strange part is not that Google became very good at finding things. It is that, somewhere along the way, "it became very good at finding us too."
Any Resemblance to Humans Is Intentional · Free to read
The Quiet Genius at the End of the Leash…
Dogs rarely interrupt. They offer no advice, no theories, no carefully prepared perspective. They simply stay — while we explain, overthink, dramatize, and occasionally lose the leash we were holding five minutes ago. A satire about listening, silence, and the uncomfortable possibility that the wiser end of the leash may not be ours.
Any Resemblance to Humans Is Intentional · Paid writing
The Sparrow — When the Ordinary Lost Its Audience
The sparrow has one serious disadvantage: it is always there. No rarity, no scandal, no personal brand — just a small bird going about its ordinary life while the rest of us search for something more interesting to notice. A satire about attention, familiarity, and the quiet things that become almost invisible simply because they never learned to demand an audience.
Any Resemblance to Humans Is Intentional · Paid writing
The Owl — When Looking Serious Was All It Took to Seem Wise
The owl has been a symbol of wisdom for centuries. Perhaps because it watches before it reacts. We, meanwhile, have built a world in which almost everyone can publish an opinion before the facts have finished arriving. The strange part is not that we speak so much. It is how quickly certainty begins to resemble knowledge.
An independent literary space
Illusions
Not Included.
Essays, satire, stories and a few inconvenient observations about the world we have grown accustomed to calling normal.
Intelligent satire, personal observation, and a healthy suspicion of anything that describes itself as inevitable.
Visit INI Published in English and HungarianBooks & stories
History,
remembered personally.
Fiction, essays and satire shaped by Central Europe, private memory and the fragile illusions of freedom.
1984: A Summer on the Other Side of the Wall
A lyrical story of borders, silence and memory, set in the final years of the Cold War—and in the uneasy space between one life and the next.
Discover the e-bookThe Central European stories
Chernobyl · National Mourning · The Wall · Velvet · The Border
View the author page on Amazon