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The Mortal Immortal
Mary Shelley
21 min
http://The%20Mortal%20Immortal
UK
July 16, 1833.—This is a memorable anniversary for me; on...
Transformation
Mary Shelley
27 min
http://Transformation
UK
 “Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d With a woful...
The Smell of a Baby
Miaad Banki
10 min
http://The%20Smell%20of%20a%20Baby
Iran
The first time she heard of the Aal was from...
The Overcoat
Nikolai Gogol
48 min
http://The%20Overcoat
Ukraine
In the department of—but it is better not to mention...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

House Taken Over
Argentina
We liked the house because, apart from its being old and spacious (in a day when old houses go down for a profitable auction of their construction materials), it kept the memories of great grandparents, our...
House Taken Over
Julio Cortázar
8 min
Rashōmon
Japan
It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashōmon, waiting for a break in the rain. No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer...
Rashōmon
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
8 min
Philomel Cottage
UK
“Good-bye, darling.” “Good-bye, sweetheart.” Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband, as he walked down the road in the direction of the village. Presently he turned a...
Philomel Cottage
Agatha Christie
31 min
The Gift of the Magi
USA
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until...
The Gift of the Magi
O. Henry
8 min
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean,...
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
F. Scott Fitzgerald
35 min
In broad daylight
Greece
I was sitting one evening after supper in St. Stephen’s Casino at Ramleh. My friend Alexander A., who resided in the Casino, had invited me and another young man, an intimate friend of ours, to have...
In broad daylight
C. P. Cavafy
15 min
The Hidden Cause
Brazil
Garcia was standing, staring at his fingernails and cracking his knuckles from time to time; Fortunato, in a rocking chair, looked at the ceiling; Maria Luisa, near the window, was finishing off some needlework. For five...
The Hidden Cause
Machado de Assis
14 min
Luigi Pirandello
He was certain, very certain, Mister Anselmo not to have ever had any dream, that could cause those laughs. He didn’t dream at all! He never dreamed! He fell every evening, at the usual time, in a black, leaden sleep, hard and very deep, from which it cost him so much effort and so much pain to rouse himself
Olga Tokarczuk
She wrote him a long letter. She never received a response. He must have crumpled up the paper in the course of reading it and thrown it into the basket. Perhaps he had burned it, he had to think of his biography, he had to point it in a suitable direction
Hermann Hesse
When I returned, it was 1920, and I was disappointed to find that people were still at war with each other all over the globe, and that there was still the same senselessness and obstinance. Some of the borders of countries had shifted; some select regions with ancient high cultures had been carefully destroyed, but all in all nothing much had changed on the surface of things
Doris Lessing
They looked down gravely, frowning. He knew the frown. At moments of failure, when he clowned to claim his mother’s attention, it was with just this grave, embarrassed inspection that she rewarded him

Our Classics

Miracle of the Horses
Russia
(A true story) Since she was beautiful and foolish —and she became more foolish when she was beautiful and more beautiful when she was foolish — and since he loved her, and since he had nothing...
Miracle of the Horses
Marina Tsvetayeva
7 min
A Simple Soul
France
For half a century the housewives of Pont-l’Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite. For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry,...
A Simple Soul
Gustave Flaubert
48 min
The Pit and the Pendulum
USA
Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.   [Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be...
The Pit and the Pendulum
Edgar Allan Poe
24 min
After the Dance
Russia
“— And you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my...
After the Dance
Leo Tolstoy
11 min
The Rocking-Horse Winner
UK
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they...
The Rocking-Horse Winner
D.H. Lawrence
21 min
The Cold
Japan
 One morning, after a fall of snow. Yasukichi sat on a chair in the physics teachers’ lounge, watching the flames in the heating stove. The flames licked up yellow one moment, then fell to sooty ruins...
The Cold
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
7 min
Rustic Chivalry
Italy
Turiddu Macca, the son of mistress Nunzia, when he came home from being a soldier, every afternoon strutted about the piazza with his bersagliere uniform and his red cap, that looked like a fortune-teller’s when he...
Rustic Chivalry
Giovanni Carmelo Verga
6 min
Transformation
UK
 “Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale, And then it set me free. “Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns; And till my...
Transformation
Mary Shelley
27 min
Through the Fire
UK
The Policeman rode through the Himalayan forest, under the moss-draped oaks, and his orderly trotted after him. ‘It’s an ugly business, Bhere Singh,’ said the Policeman. ‘Where are they?’ ‘It is a very ugly business,’ said...
Through the Fire
Rudyard Kipling
5 min
LA GRANDE BRETÈCHE
France
“Ah! madame,” replied the doctor, “I have some appalling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper hour in a conversation—you know the pretty jest recorded by Chamfort, and said to the Duc de...
LA GRANDE BRETÈCHE
Honoré de Balzac
11 min

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