English
0 min 70 min
Services
USA
September 12, 1950. The survivors limp down the mountain to a 6×6 that drops them at the field service platoon behind the hills. Seven men remaining from forty, stunned and filthy as they line up for...
Services
Gordon Haber
8 min
An Attempt at Nuclear Physics
Sweden
Welcome to the world! Take a deep breath, cry your first cry and open your eyes. Well done. Now you’re ready to be fed, burped and taken care of. Take your first steps, say your first...
An Attempt at Nuclear Physics
Jonas Hassen Khemiri
7 min
The “Gloria Scott”
UK
“I have some papers here,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, “which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance...
The “Gloria Scott”
Arthur Conan Doyle
31 min
The Death of a Bachelor
Austria
Someone had knocked at the door, quite gently, but the doctor awoke at once, turned on the light, and sat up in bed. He glanced at his wife who was sleeping quietly, picked up his dressing-gown,...
The Death of a Bachelor
Arthur Schnitzler
17 min
Reverse Bug
USA
“Let’s get the announcements out of the way,” said Ilka, the teacher, to her foreigners in Conversational English for Adults. “Tomorrow evening the institute is holding a symposium. Ahmed,” she asked the Turkish student with the...
Reverse Bug
Lore Segal
14 min
Insurrection – A chapter from “The Gorilla”
Tunisia
About one o’clock in the afternoon. The wind is busy rolling along some beer-can that has been drained of its contents in the deserted street. A massive silence links the arch of the Sea Gate with...
Insurrection – A chapter from “The Gorilla”
Kamal Riahi
5 min
Mandelbaum Gate
Palestine
“Well then tell her that she intends to get out of here, mister,” the Israeli policeman called out. He was standing, arms folded, at one entrance to Mandelbaum Gate when I explained to him that we...
Mandelbaum Gate
Emile Habiby
8 min
Mortimer Gray’s History of Death
UK
I was an utterly unexceptional child of the twenty-ninth century, comprehensively engineered for emortality while I was still a more-or-less inchoate blastula and decanted from an artificial womb in Naburn Hatchery in the county of York...
Mortimer Gray’s History of Death
Brian Stableford
10 min
The Sans-Gueule
France
They found them lying next to each other on the burned grass, and gathered them both up. Their clothes had been blown off in shreds. The explosion had burned out the numbers and shattered the metal...
The Sans-Gueule
Marcel Schwob
7 min
The Curfew Tolls
USA
“It is not enough to be the possessor of genius—the time and the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world—a Newton, grown up...
The Curfew Tolls
Stephen Vincent Benét
25 min
Chaim and Me (A chapter from novel)
Algeria
Due to the imminent end of my summer break, and shortly before resuming my work at the Teacher Training College at the beginning of the third week of September, I reassured my wife, Zuleika al-Nadra, that...
Chaim and Me (A chapter from novel)
Habib Sayah
6 min
The Pink Tuber
Russia
On Thursday Anna found out that she was pregnant. When she came home from work, she didn’t start dinner but instead sat at the tiny kitchen table, put her gaunt hands on the new oilcloth, and...
The Pink Tuber
Vladimir Sorokin
6 min
Deception or Dreams of the Man Who Didn’t Lose His Shadow  
Algeria
Was it merely deception or something more?   The paths were so exhausting, and the days were so hard! Wouldn’t it have been better to take the short-cuts? Nothing is of any use now. All that...
Deception or Dreams of the Man Who Didn’t Lose His Shadow  
Waciny Laredj
11 min
Prostheses
Israel
The man who has been the dearest person to my mother for the past 42 years is dead. Facing a dead man is a shitty feeling. A baby’s howling creeps through the open window. It’s midnight....
Prostheses
Iftach Alony
9 min
Waltz on East 6th Street
USA
Years ago, Aunt Renata squeezed a picture into my hand when my mother wasn’t looking. Aunt Renata wasn’t really my aunt, but rather someone to whom my mother had clung like a sister, like blood. In...
Waltz on East 6th Street
Tehila Lieberman
11 min
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
Rabbits of Baghdad
Iraq
I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, blind but seeing, blind people who can see, but do not see. José Saramago   Saeed, drunk, opened the door. The rabbit hopped inside....
Rabbits of Baghdad
Raghad al-Suheil
11 min
The Last Leaf
USA
Old Nannie sat hunched upon herself expecting her own death momentarily. The Grandmother had said to her at parting, with the easy prophecy of the aged, that this might be their last farewell on earth; they...
The Last Leaf
O. Henry
6 min
The Red Crown
Russia
Most of all I hate the sun, loud human voices, and pounding. Rapid, rapid pounding. I am so afraid of people that if I hear someone else’s footsteps and the sound of voices in the corridor...
The Red Crown
Mikhail Bulgakov
8 min
There Are No Bodies Such as This
USA
Berne, Switzerland 1765   A season of ice descends upon the winter chalet, cracking mortar and spreading bright veins across the window glass. Water freezes in the kitchen’s basins. The cat is found stiff and white...
There Are No Bodies Such as This
Adam McOmber
16 min
The River Warta
USA
Now that Caroline lived alone for the first time in her life, she began to be irritated by the cleanliness of her house. When she left something somewhere, it stayed there. If she didn’t enter a...
The River Warta
Amy Gustine
20 min
The Wizard
Japan
Well now, esteemed readers, I am now in Ōsaka and shall therefore relate a local story. Long ago there was a man who came to the city to seek a position as a menial. Ranking as...
The Wizard
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
5 min
The Last Communist
USA
 My parents always had visitors. They would come in the evening and sit in folding chairs on the back porch of our small house in New Brunswick. They greeted me—an only child —with the warmth of...
The Last Communist
Steven Schwartz
32 min
Napoleon and the Spectre
UK
Well, as I was saying, the Emperor got into bed. “Chevalier,” says he to his valet, “let down those window-curtains, and shut the casement before you leave the room.” Chevalier did as he was told, and...
Napoleon and the Spectre
Charlotte Brontë
4 min
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