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The Wife of His Youth
USA
I Mr. Ryder was going to give a ball. There were several reasons why this was an opportune time for such an event. Mr. Ryder might aptly be called the dean of the Blue Veins. The...
The Wife of His Youth
Charles W. Chesnutt
18 min
The Little Mermaid
Denmark
Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest of cornflowers, and as clear as the clearest glass; but it is very deep, deeper than any anchor-cable can reach,...
The Little Mermaid
Hans Christian Andersen
36 min
The Nightingale and the Rose
UK
“She promised she’d dance with me if I brought her a red rose,” cried a young heart-broken student. “But there’s not one in this whole garden.” From her nest in the oak tree, the Nightingale heard...
The Nightingale and the Rose
Oscar Wilde
5 min
The Happy Prince
UK
The statue of the Happy Prince stood high above the city. It was covered with gold, its eyes were bright blue jewels, and a red jewel hung from its waist. Everyone thought that it was very...
The Happy Prince
Oscar Wilde
7 min
A Millionaire’s Girl
USA
Twilights were wonderful just after the war. They hung above New York like indigo wash, forming themselves from asphalt dust and sooty shadows under the cornices and limp gusts of air exhaled from closing windows, to...
A Millionaire’s Girl
Zelda Fitzgerald
18 min
A Couple Of Nuts
USA
The summer of 1924 shriveled the trees in the Champs-Elysees to a misty blue till they swayed before your eyes as if they were about to go down under the gasoline fumes. Before July was out,...
A Couple Of Nuts
Zelda Fitzgerald
19 min
Miss Ella
USA
Bitter things dried behind the eyes of Miss Ella like garlic on a string before an open fire. The acrid fumes of sweet memories had gradually reddened their rims until at times they shone like the...
Miss Ella
Zelda Fitzgerald
11 min
Sigmund Freud Slept Here
Israel
It was difficult to explain the true nature of her journey. After some deliberation, she decided to mention it only in passing: for her fortieth birthday, she would take a kind of pilgrimage in Sigmund Freud’s...
Sigmund Freud Slept Here
Orna Reuven
14 min
Hills Like White Elephants
USA
The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against...
Hills Like White Elephants
Ernest Hemingway
5 min
The Gilded Six-Bits
USA
It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support.   But there was something happy about the...
The Gilded Six-Bits
Zora Neale Hurston
18 min
Story About Nothing
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
The Old Cable
Germany
No matter whether I really ever said I had no desire to surround myself with nerds, hoarders, bon vivants, and pizza eaters, I can empathize with a good man who one day pays a visit to...
The Old Cable
Max Goldt
4 min
Fungus
USA
After Guadalupe Nettel’s “Fungus” With my big toe, I pressed down on the bloated bulb of seaweed until a burst of salt air and ocean water popped out of its membrane. Amalia refused to do the...
Fungus
Mia Carrillo
5 min
The Birthmark
USA
In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual...
The Birthmark
Nathaniel Hawthorne
25 min
Wants
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
Psychology
New Zealand
When she opened the door and saw him standing there she was more pleased than ever before, and he, too, as he followed her into the studio, seemed very very happy to have come. “Not busy?”...
Psychology
Katherine Mansfield
10 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
The Ghost
UK
HE KILLED me quite easily by crashing my head on the cobbles. Bang! Lord, what a fool I was! All my hate went out with that first bang: a fool to have kicked up that fuss...
The Ghost
Richard Hughes
3 min
NIGHTDRIVING
USA
Passing Robitussin, my girlfriend guides the Bronco across the beach with her knee driving the wheel. Driving through night. Through black. She passes it to me. I take it, take some, pass it back. She takes...
NIGHTDRIVING
Robert Warf
9 min
NIRVANA
USA
It’s late, and I can’t sleep. I raise a window for some spring Palo Alto air, but it doesn’t help. In bed, eyes open, I hear whispers, which makes me think of the president, because we...
NIRVANA
Adam Johnson
30 min
The Green Door
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
Eclipse
Spain
That’s the way life is: you push a button, and life turns on. —Clarice Lispector   Leonora and Adelino were an old-fashioned couple. They had just turned eighty, and they shook with fear when they blew...
Eclipse
Almudena Sánchez
14 min
A Duty Call
Israel
I knew that Hertz and his wife could not possibly be home at this hour. I even had a note ready in my purse: “Came by but found you were out. So sorry. Shoshana”. It was...
A Duty Call
Lea Goldberg
4 min
THE RAY OF MOONSHINE
Spain
I DO not know whether this is history which seems like a tale, or a tale which seems like history; what I can affirm is that in its core it contains a truth, a truth supremely...
THE RAY OF MOONSHINE
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
10 min
The Sphinx Without a Secret
UK
One afternoon I was sitting outside the Cafe de la Paix, watching the splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life, and wondering over my vermouth at the strange panorama of pride and poverty that was passing before...
The Sphinx Without a Secret
Oscar Wilde
5 min
A Haunted House
UK
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple. “Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh,...
A Haunted House
Virginia Woolf
2 min
A Joke
Russia
IT was noon of a bright winter’s day. The air was crisp with frost, and Nadia, who was walking beside me, found her curls and the delicate down on her upper lip silvered with her own...
A Joke
Anton Chekhov
4 min
Perpetuum Mobile
Israel
The summer I fell in love with AI was also the summer I fell in love with N, and the two weren’t unrelated. Early that summer, a machine N had built kept popping up in my...
Perpetuum Mobile
Zohar Elmakias
4 min
A Clean Marriage
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
Dogs of Summer
Spain
On the Night of San Juan, Nana built a gigantic fire. She built it in the middle of the garden, and it was several metres tall. On the Night of San Juan, you couldn’t breathe for...
Dogs of Summer
Andrea Abreu
12 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
Two Women
Denmark
When Britta was depressed, nervous, and restless like this, so not even a complete reorganization of all the furniture in the house, or the preparation of a complicated dinner, could help her, there were only two...
Two Women
Tove Ditlevsen
7 min
She’s not quite woman’s best friend
USA
When I came back to Tucson for Christmas break, my mom was like, “You need to clean out your closet or you’re not going anywhere.” This was her way of being dumb about the fact that...
She’s not quite woman’s best friend
KILEY REID
10 min
It was nice not to meet you
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
59 Places to Fuck in Arizona
UK
There’s been more time to study her since the tribunal, but you can’t do it twenty-four-seven. Some people in this world still have jobs, and Jennifer’s boss would hit high C if she found out you’d...
59 Places to Fuck in Arizona
Rodge Glass
16 min
39′
Romania
For Freddie, Brian, John, Roger, and Cătălina   It’s complicated, complicated as hell. You fall head over heels for Elisabeta Ciupercă, your sexiest classmate in the eighth grade, a drum solo pounds in your chest cavity every...
39′
Radu Paraschivescu
21 min
A Centimetre or Two a Year
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
A Gipsy Prophecy
Ireland
“I really think,” said the Doctor, “that, at any rate, one of us should go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.” “Good!” said Considine. “After dinner we will take our cigars and...
A Gipsy Prophecy
Bram Stoker 
14 min
Like Penelope
Russia
 Here once lived a girl who was beloved by her mother but no one else. The girl was used to it and didn’t get too upset. Her name was Oksana – a glamorous, fashionable name —...
Like Penelope
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya
16 min
A Black Dancer in a One-person Dance Company
Israel
While I was waiting for Eriksson, I decided to get rid of all my meds. I packed them in clear garbage bags and went downstairs to the trashcan, my hands full of Lomotil, Hismanal, Diazepam, Ampicillin,...
A Black Dancer in a One-person Dance Company
Esty G. Haim
14 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
The Other Woman
USA
“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...
The Other Woman
Sherwood Anderson
14 min
Madame Bovary from Neveh Tsedek
Israel
Like at other periods of metaphysical ardor, at this time too, the body (that of a woman, to be sure) wasn’t taken very seriously.  This may be why even the dockworkers in the port that day...
Madame Bovary from Neveh Tsedek
Nurit Zarchi
10 min
Romance with a Double Bass
Russia
The musician Bowzinsky was walking from town to the country house of Prince Bibulov, where an evening of music and dance was to “take place,” as they say, for an engagement party. On his back was...
Romance with a Double Bass
Anton Chekhov
6 min
The Last Arab Man
Tunisia
I was in the process of completing some research on the progress of democratization in Tunisia under the threat of terrorism when a message notification popped up. The message read: “I would like to connect with...
The Last Arab Man
Maha Jouini
12 min
The Orange Ribbon
Palestine
As she waited for the train, she grabbed an orange ribbon out of the hand of a settler who had a blond beard and a white kippa. Then she sat down again in the shade. The...
The Orange Ribbon
Iyad Barghouti
7 min
Hylas
Sweden
I was intending to paint a picture of David as the Shepherd, but nowhere could I find a suit­able model for the face; there were several white and ruddy,’ but none which had on them the impress...
Hylas
Eric Stenbock
12 min
River of Honey, Lake of Milk
Syria
Hadiya would visit us with her mother. On sunny days, we did our homework together under the grapevine; in winter, we did it by the stove. Her books were often torn: she didn’t like books or...
River of Honey, Lake of Milk
Ahmed Omar
5 min
Nam
Spain
She’s getting naked. Something either very bad or very good is happening. Happening to me. Whatever it is, my parents can’t find out. I’m at a friend’s house. Nothing strange there. But my new friend, half...
Nam
María Fernanda Ampuero
12 min
Gabe
USA
Tommy’s cousin Gabe. Tommy’s distant cousin Gabe from Stillwater, Minnesota. Tommy’s cousin Gabe, related to my husband through divorce and remarriage, in lieu of actual blood, who arrives on my front porch at dinnertime with a...
Gabe
Holiday Reinhorn
7 min
Ladybird
Morocco
I held an unusually long reed in my hand and I dipped it as deep as I could into the river. It fell in and disappeared in front of me. I took my feet out of...
Ladybird
Latifa Labsir
7 min
Ligaments
Spain
For Juanina Jaguen, my girlfriend now and forever   “Orchids!” she cried. “Orchids! Those are orchids!” I was not in the mood for orchids. My leg was in agony. Not just one part of it, the...
Ligaments
Hipólito Gonzales Navarro
12 min
Karim the Romantic, Bather of the Dead
Palestine
“I’m a romantic, you brutes, and I adore Nizar Qabbani!” This was Karim’s only reply to people’s accusations and taunts. And it was on the basis of this reply that the camp residents had added the...
Karim the Romantic, Bather of the Dead
Ziad Khadash
4 min
He and She
Russia
They are nomads. Only Paris is graced with their presence for months; they are stingy to Berlin, Vienna, Neapoli, Madrid and other capitals. In Paris they feel quasi-at home. For them, Paris is the capital, their...
He and She
Anton Chekhov
11 min
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