Our Collection - The Short Story Project

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

Germany

In summer, during the season, he works from sunrise to sunset. Drives to work at dawn, comes back at dusk. It’s beautiful; the drive takes exactly as long as the sun rising and setting. They set...

Lost in the Forest

Terézia Mora

20 min

Germany

‘Porta-Pat!’ comes in stereo from either side. They laugh. ‘Your turn!’ To get the beers in, they mean. They’re already drunk as twin skunks. They really mean it. Porta-Pat. Supposed to be my new nickname, they...

On a Saturday

Finn-Ole Heinrich

14 min

Germany

South I woke myself up by laughing and couldn’t stop for quite a while, even though from the first moment on I couldn’t remember what I was laughing about. Henri said he once woke up...

Story About Nothing

Peter Glaser

17 min

USA

The nodes were like beetles, their black metal bodies shining between the attendant’s fingers. “Just a pinch, dear,” he said, leaning in and fixing the nodes to my temples, measuring symmetry with my eyes and his....

The Fig Leaf

Benjamin Shane Evans

6 min

USA

I went running and tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. I broke my fall with my hand but also smashed my iPhone, which wasn’t in a protective case because the one I had didn’t fit...

And Even Higher

Todd Pitock

8 min

New Zealand

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up...

Bliss

Katherine Mansfield

18 min

USA

I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said,...

Wants

Grace Paley

3 min

Russia

Semyon Ardalyonovitch said to me all of a sudden the day before yesterday: “Why, will you ever be sober, Ivan Ivanovitch? Tell me that, pray.” A strange requirement. I did not resent it, I am a...

Bobok

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

25 min

Czech Republic

That evening Mr. Tomsa, chief clerk in a government office, had just settled down with his earphones and, with a gratified smile, was listening to a pleasant performance of some Dvorak dances on the radio —...

An Attempt at Murder

Karel Čapek

5 min

Germany

Ever since I was young, I used to disappear from time to time to reinvigorate myself, and I would lose myself in other worlds. People would search for me, and when they could not find me,...

If the War Continues

Hermann Hesse

10 min

UK

3:34 am. She was awake. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the bedroom. She could make out every familiar feature. In recent months, this time had become too familiar to her. She no longer...

Nocturnal Yearnings

Naomi Nightingale

3 min

USA

Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly...

The Green Door

O. Henry

10 min

USA

It was the 15th of the August of 1999, the morning before the wedding of Benjamin Kern and Maitreya Scheffer, ceremony and celebration to be hosted by the bride’s parents at their home in Bethel, Vermont,...

Are You Enjoying Your Forgiveness?

Julia May Jonas

31 min

Japan

My husband emerged from the bedroom, woken by the beeps at the end of the washing-machine cycle. ‘Morning . . . Sorry I overslept. Shall I take over?’ The weekend laundry was his job, but since...

A Clean Marriage

Sayaka Murata

20 min

Israel

Sometimes strangers come visit, friends of yours, parents themselves. I don’t have any problem with that, let them come, you have every right to invite them. But as long as they do, why do they have...

It was nice not to meet you

Ofir Oz

4 min

France

It was in the midst of these gloomy shadows, in the stifling night that every moment seemed to intensify about him, that there began to shine, like a star lost in the dark abysm of space,...

The Piano

Romain Rolland

19 min

France

Louisa, who let no opportunity escape of earning a little money, used to go out as cook for exceptional occasions, such, as marriages or baptismal feasts. Melchior pretended to know nothing about it—it touched his vanity—but...

Visiting The House of The Rich

Romain Rolland

15 min

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

Gaza

I opened my eyes to the world in a city with a lifeless childhood. I opened my eyes in the battlefield. Nobody told me who the soldiers were, or what occupation is. I grew up having...

Endgame

Abdalhadi Alijla

4 min

Israel

It was the last summer before they gave the Sinai back to Egypt. I was thirteen and I drove with my parents and their friends down to Ras Burka. I think that must have been our...

Flies

Eshkol Nevo

10 min

Israel

“Did you hear about the girl?” the Candyland cashier, who resembled a human gummy bear, asked me. “You didn’t hear? She was brought to the emergency room early this morning. The orderlies are calling her ‘The...

S&M in the Holy Land

Roy Chen

17 min

Libya

I . . . am a cheap sock, I cost half a dinar. An industrial cooperative manufactured me, and my profit margin was redistributed among the elements of production. An ordinary man bought me, a manual...

The Story of a Sock

Muhammad al-Asfar

3 min

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