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The first time, he was fishing with Danny. fishing was a sacrament, and therefore, after the strike, when his head was clear, there was the blurry aftertaste of ritual: the casting of the spoon in lazy repetitions, the slow cranking, the utterance of the clicking reel, the baiting...
It was the night Dirch Passer the comedian died. He collapsed onstage. His heart was sick and he was taken away by ambulance to the hospital, where they said he was dead on arrival. It was September 3, 1980, and the reason I remember it so well is...
Now, just like a beast, it’s howling, Now it cries, just like a child. The whole story began, according to the omniscient Aksinya, with Palchikov the clerk, who lived in Shalometyevo, falling in love with the agronomist’s daughter. The love was ardent, wasting the poor man’s heart. He...
As the train rocked dead at Livingston he saw the man, in a worn khaki shirt with button flaps buttoned, arms crossed. The boy’s hand sprang up by reflex, and his face broke into a smile. The man smiled back gravely, and nodded. He did not otherwise move....
“Son coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu’on le touche il rèsonne.” – De Béranger. During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback,...
Day had broken long ago. The mountains on whose peaks black clouds settled sparkled under a cold blue as though reporting that the pause given during the night by the snow that had snowed thus for days was about to end. A pencil of feeble sunlight getting ready...
New
Mexico
Two items of interest: (1) Today I’m going to talk...
Israel
A pregnant woman lays naked in a bathtub filled with...
Short Stories from around the world |
Short Stories from around the world |
Short Stories from around the world |
Hidden Gems
Mexico
Guadalupe Nettel
9 min
9 min
Germany
Georg Klein
4 min
4 min
Syria
Ahmed Omar
5 min
5 min
Romania
Augustin Cupsa
8 min
8 min
Tunisia
Ziad Abd el-Qadir
6 min
6 min
France
Gustave Flaubert
48 min
48 min
Slovakia
Erika Olahová
5 min
5 min
When I received your vulgar and at the same time queer letter, my impulse for the first minute was to tear it into shreds, but I have preserved it as a curiosity.
/ A Novel in Nine Letters
I have a mermaid in a jar that Quilty bought me at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. The mermaid’s all, “I hate you I hate you I hate you,” but she’s in a jar, and unless I loosen the top she’s not coming out to kill me.
/ Mermaid in the Jar
They had been young lovers many years ago when the future was still a distant concept for both of them.
/ Bullet in the Brain
And with that breath of life, a Lisette we didn’t know was suddenly revealed. Her eyes were much less wide, more secretive, more laughing, and her protruding and ordinary face had a certain ironic superiority.
/ Monkeys
By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away, it now only came in fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
/ Dracula's Guest
Our Classics
USA
Sherwood Anderson
9 min
9 min
Russia
Anton Chekhov
7 min
7 min
UK
Joseph Conrad
24 min
24 min
Uruguay
Horacio Quiroga
6 min
6 min
USA
O. Henry
10 min
10 min
USA
Herman Melville
32 min
32 min
Spain
Miguel de Unamuno
7 min
7 min
USA
Stephen Vincent Benét
25 min
25 min
Egypt
Yusuf Idris
6 min
6 min
Canada
Lucy Maud Montgomery
13 min
13 min
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