Our Collection - The Short Story Project

Argentina

On that day, she had returned home later than usual. A meeting that extended longer at the office, a coffee with a friend at El Martínez on Av. Corrientes, and an unexpected delay on the subway....

Chimi

Alfredo Sanz

2 min

Argentina

Six olives contain as many calories as a small steak. Could that be right? She’d read it out of the corner of her eye in a magazine belonging to a woman in a faded ski sweater...

A Centimetre or Two a Year

Matías Capelli

20 min

Argentina

Mojito sniffs through the bars of the gate. He gets bored and comes back with muddy feet. I pet his fur. The color of tea with milk, Brenda says, as the dog licks my hands. ...

The Next Soviet Union

Martín Felipe Castagnet

11 min

Argentina

The giant is starting to rot and Minerval still has no news from the man that’s dreaming it. The programmer must be sick, she thinks: if he were dead the forest would dissolve and then the...

Inside Outdoors

Martín Felipe Castagnet

7 min

Argentina

It was one of those wedding parties that was doomed to failure right from the start: too many deaf great-aunts, friends of the bride’s father who’d only come because they felt they had to and couldn’t...

The Psychic Uncle

Federico Falco

16 min

Argentina

The blinds are pulled down; the old couple who live opposite must be on holiday. Before, the old woman would come out every morning to water the plants on her balcony. The old man would stay...

Ballet

Federico Falco

22 min

Argentina

One Sunday afternoon a family was digesting its midday meal and having a desultory debate about which of the many dishes they’d just put away was chiefly responsible for their present lethargy. From one corner of...

Simidolia

Marcelo Cohen

12 min

Argentina

A moral romance The restaurant, which offered simple but excellent fare, was lit by a large artificial moon augmented by some weak recessed lighting in the walls. The owner oversaw proceedings from the till. At...

You Have to Pay

Marcelo Cohen

11 min

Argentina

The autumn felt more like summer than the summer had. I was wearing my blue silk dress, and I had the little Pekinese they’d given me for my birthday when I arrived at my boyfriend’s house....

The Voice

Silvina Ocampo

2 min

Argentina

Thursday, July 6 I’m sitting down to write because I finally have something to tell you. The boy from the newsstand didn’t bring me the paper today. I went to complain. On the way there...

Diary of a Newspaper Reader

Eduardo Berti

11 min

Argentina

She called you two weeks ago. Just like that. Out of the blue. Today is Mother’s Day, and you’re going to see her again. You wanted to make as good a start to the day as...

You’re Only Bleeding

Matías Capelli

16 min

Argentina

In February 2001 we found exactly what we were looking for: a wooden house in the suburbs of Miami with large windows overlooking a canal with green water that flowed into the Atlantic. We considered ourselves...

A House in the Burbs

Valeria Correa Fiz

12 min

Argentina

She has long legs like a pair of rivers coming together at the source, a deep lagoon: dark, wet and mysterious. But she also has a pair of repeating words, a tattoo on her back and...

The Curve

Hernán Ronsino

2 min

Argentina

The door of the bus opened. From her seat, Elena watched the passengers climb in. “Where does he think all those people are going to go?” she asked her daughter, who was sitting next to the...

The Secret

Alejandra Laurencich

6 min

Argentina

My name is Tomás. I’m thirty years old. I live with my father. We’re two bachelors in a big house who run into each other at odd hours and treat one another with respect, but we...

The Song We Sang Every Day

Luciano Lamberti

9 min

Argentina

The house was falling down around us, but once you reach a certain age you just let it happen. The dirty plates were piled up in the kitchen, there was no one to make my bed,...

Interruption of Service

Tomás Sánchez Bellocchio

11 min

Argentina

The moment he heard the scream – he hadn’t heard the gunshot, or hadn’t interpreted it as such, because once you’ve got used to the endless cascade of noise from an internal patio you stop trying...

Doing Your Duty

Ariel Magnus

11 min

Argentina

We set out early. Dad has a new second-hand burgundy Peugeot 404. I climb into the back, up onto the parcel shelf next to the rear window, and stretch out. I’m comfortable there. I like to...

Early This Morning

Pedro Mairal

8 min

Argentina

I was in a bus, sitting by the window, looking out at the street. Suddenly a dog started barking very loudly nearby. I tried to see where it was. So did some other passengers. The bus...

The Dog

César Aira

13 min

Argentina

The Christmas that Father Christmas came to spend the night at my house was the last time we were all together. After that night Mummy and Daddy stopped fighting, but I don’t think Father Christmas had...

Father Christmas Spends the Night

Samanta Schweblin

7 min

Argentina

A court in Edmonton, in the Province of Alberta, Canada, has found the Southern Tobacco Company guilty of the charges presented against it by Joshua Lynn and has ordered the company to pay compensation of two...

The Tobacco Man

Diego Vecchio

9 min

Argentina

This wasn’t a pair of women’s shoes with perfectly formed heels dug out from the back of a wardrobe. Or a box containing letters from the war written lovingly to an eleven-year-old boy. Discoveries like that...

Kasos

Nicolás Mavrakis

12 min

Argentina

Lutan showed me into a bright room with white walls and high ceilings. She didn’t seem surprised to see me show up at her door after three years and in a country where we were both...

Still Lutan

María Martoccia

13 min

Argentina

These days we flee, hiding in dark corners, shying away from daylight. But things weren’t always like this. There was a time when they were just pests. The lions first began to appear in public parks,...

Lions

Bef

6 min