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Short Stories

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The Sevdah Machine
Jordan Silversmith
11 min
http://The%20Sevdah%20Machine
USA
Instruction Manual (Before You Listen) Low light, half-light, no light:...
Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote
Jorge Luis Borges
11 min
http://Pierre%20Menard,%20author%20of%20the%20Quixote
Argentina
For Silvina Ocampo   The visible oeuvre this novelist has...
The Day Sadat Flew to Jerusalem
Mona Yahia
10 min
http://The%20Day%20Sadat%20Flew%20to%20Jerusalem
Germany
–Crazy, isn’t it?   –It’s happening in our own lifetime!...
The Most Forgettable Murder
Nahar Trina
5 min
http://The%20Most%20Forgettable%20Murder
USA
“Oh no! What a disaster!”   The piercing cry of...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Countries Background
Russia 44
USA 206
UK 76
Iraq 8
Syria 5

Hidden Gems

Solid Objects
UK
The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of the beach was one small black spot. As it came nearer to the ribs and spine of the stranded pilchard boat, it became apparent from a...
Solid Objects
Virginia Woolf
9 min
The Nose
Ukraine
I On the 25th March, 18——, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg. On the Ascension Avenue there lived a barber of the name of Ivan Jakovlevitch. He had lost his family name, and...
The Nose
Nikolai Gogol
36 min
Five Girls
USA
“There won’t be many more such good times as these for us,” said Olive Sargent, mournfully hugging her knees as she sat on the floor under the big Victory; “we’ve got to go out into the...
Five Girls
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
5 min
The Birthmark
USA
In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual...
The Birthmark
Nathaniel Hawthorne
25 min
A Mighty Nice Man
USA
The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...
A Mighty Nice Man
Patricia Highsmith
8 min
The Other Woman
USA
“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...
The Other Woman
Sherwood Anderson
14 min
A White Heron
USA
The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a...
A White Heron
Sarah Orne Jewett
16 min
Mikhail Bulgakov
The cat had grown into a dog and started bowling along not far from the sledge. I turned around and saw very close behind the sledge a second four-legged creature. I can swear that it had pointed ears and was moving easily behind the sledge, as if on a parquet floor. There was something menacing and insolent in its speed
Lorrie Moore
1981. On public transportation, mothers with soft, soapy, corduroyed seraphs glance at you, their faces dominoes of compassion. Their seraphs are small and quiet or else restlessly counting bus seat colors outloud: “Blue-blue-blue, red-red-red, lullow-lullow-lullow”
David Albahari
My pajamas had Disney characters all over them. I had been given them several years before by my wife: she went to the States as a Fulbright fellow, came back with the pajamas, then went there again. She said she was going for professional advancement, but never said what had to be advanced
Matías Candeira
My sons were complaining heartily about the tuxedos I had made them wear, but I have to say that their elegant, straight-backed, ambassadorial bearing, copious sweating and swatting at the mosquitoes buzzing about their necks was the very embodiment of the world where one walks on two feet and drinks Dry Martinis but leaves the olive glistening and untouched

Our Classics

The Blue Cross
UK
Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no...
The Blue Cross
G.K. Chesterton
29 min
The Steel Windpipe
Russia
So I was alone, surrounded by November gloom and whirling snow; the house was smothered in it and there was a moaning in the chimneys. I had spent all twenty-four years of my life in a...
The Steel Windpipe
Mikhail Bulgakov
8 min
The Goophered Grapevine
USA
Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate. I shared, from an unprofessional standpoint, his opinion that...
The Goophered Grapevine
Charles W. Chesnutt
22 min
The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love
Japan
According to Ashin’s “Essentials of Salvation,” the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land. In that Land the earth is made of emerald and the...
The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love
Yukio Mishima
24 min
The City
Russia
It was an immense city in which they lived: Petrov, clerk in a commercial bank, and he, the other,—name unknown. They used to meet once a year, at Easter, when they both went to pay a...
The City
Leonid Andreyev
11 min
The Ransom of Red Chief
USA
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, In Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment...
The Ransom of Red Chief
O. Henry
16 min
Little Miss Sophie
USA
When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint, swelling notes of the organ were dying away in distant echoes through the great arches of the silent church, and she was alone, crouching in a little,...
Little Miss Sophie
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
9 min
The Gentle Lena
USA
Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant for four years and had liked it very well. Lena had been brought from Germany to Bridgepoint by a cousin and had been in...
The Gentle Lena
Gertrude Stein
54 min
The Taipan
UK
No one knew better than he that he was an important person. He was number one in not the least important branch of the most important English firm in China. He had worked his way up...
The Taipan
William Somerset Maugham
12 min
Nose Dwarf
Germany
This story is from the collection called “The Sheik of Alexandria and his Slaves,” and is supposed to be told by a slave to the Sheik.   Sir, those people are much mistaken who fancy that...
Nose Dwarf
Wilhelm Hauff
44 min

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