Of the writers of the fertile ΄60 generation after World War II, a few rose to be part of the European value: Dumitru Radu Popescu, Nicolae Breban, Paul Goma and Augustin Buzura. They met, undoubtedly, the qualities of novelists, as part of the large scale novel tradition of Thomas Mann or Dostoevsky, the role of Raskolnikov’s father being taken by Nicolae Breban, in masterpieces such as Sick Animals or Annunciation. Breban made his direct debut in the novel, overturning the theory of the ages of creation supported by Camil Petrescu. The short story writer Breban appears late, restricted to only two volumes: Orpheus in Hell, Iasi, 2008; Free act, Iași, Polirom Publishing House, 2020). We are, in a way, facing a paradox, because he has first apprenticed to Chekhov’s short prose, urging the young prose writers to read the ten volumes of Czech sketches and short stories to learn the construction of the human typology in the novel. In the texts analyzed here, we stopped at two masterpieces: the short stories Free Act and In defense of dictatorship.