Our Collection – The Short Story Project

Russia

In the cemetery above a fresh mound of earth stands a new cross of oak⁠—strong, heavy, smooth, a pleasant thing to look at. It is April, but the days are grey. From a long way off...

Gentle Breathing

Ivan Bunin

9 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

Russia

“Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction,” laughed Ivan. “Well, then, I mean to place the event described in the poem in the sixteenth century, an age—as you must have been told at...

The Grand Inquisitor

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

25 min

Russia

So I was alone, surrounded by November gloom and whirling snow; the house was smothered in it and there was a moaning in the chimneys. I had spent all twenty-four years of my life in a...

The Steel Windpipe

Mikhail Bulgakov

8 min

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

Russia

At nine o’clock one morning in June, Captain Popov rang the doorbell. No one answered for a long time, but finally he heard the sound of scurrying. “Who’s there? Who is it?” a plaintive female voice...

The Fugitive

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

26 min

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

Israel

When everything in the house is upside down and all mixed up, it means only one thing: we’ve got company. It doesn’t matter how many guests there are — one or thirty-one — before their arrival,...

Being Frosya Shneerson (Chapter 6)

Tasha Karluka

8 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

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

Tunisia

Nur al-Din al-Ajnaf had been a Communist at university. After the fall of the Soviet Union he gave up on Communism for good. Or perhaps this was a rumour close friends spread about him. Nuru was...

Moscow

Kamal Riahi

5 min

Russia

Our friends the Zaitsevs live out of town “The air is so much better out in the suburbs,” they say. That is, they can’t afford to live where the air is bad. A small group of...

The White Flower

Teffi

4 min

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

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

Russia

I could think of nothing else all month: Would they let me go to the Christmas party, or not? I was cunning. I prepared the ground. I told my mother about the glorious achievements of Zhenya Ryazanova,...

The Green Devil

Teffi

6 min

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

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

Israel

His heart suddenly flipped over in his chest. “Just like a carp in the kitchen sink,” Grigory Katz thought. To calm himself down, he stuck his nose into his scarf and breathed in his own warm...

Rooms

Anna Likhtikman

8 min

Israel

Our school was named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the first woman awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Therefore, we had endless lectures about her life: how Zoya did in school, what she read, what essays...

Zoya

Alice Bialsky

33 min

Russia

He looks like me and is the same height, but he appears to be a half-head taller – the cad. —From an old comedy As it happened, Alexander Golts came out of the vaudeville show...

Incident on Cur Street

Alexander Grin

7 min

Israel

“Sonya, how could you? How can you wear those short dresses covered with pea-green dots?” “Sonya, have you said your prayers?” “Sonya, how can you listen to those fascists?” “Sonya, have you read Sholem Aleichem?”...

Chicken Morning, Noon and Night

Tasha Karluka

8 min

Russia

It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home...

The Lady with the Dog

Anton Chekhov

26 min

Russia

Yasha Hein woke up while it was still dark – long before the alarm clock rang – because of a strange quietness that was filling him up from within. During the evening of the previous day...

Yasha’s Eternity

Anna Starobinets

17 min

Russia

I – How to Survive with the Aid of Literature. Astride a Play to Tiflis. If someone asked me what I deserve, I would say in all honesty before God that I deserve hard labor....

Bohemia

Mikhail Bulgakov

9 min

Russia

The Death-Bed Notes of a Fool My life is coming to an end. Soon Death will tap its boney finger on my door… soon! Suffering has so withered my chest that no maiden’s kisses can...

The Carriage

Nikolay Nekrasov

9 min

Russia

Envy, like all our feelings, had been dulled and weakened by hunger. We lacked the strength to experience emotions, to seek easier work, to walk, to ask, to beg… We envied only our acquaintances, the ones...

Condensed Milk

Varlam Shalamov

6 min

Russia

With a leg–tossing military marching step (toes in, heels out, knees to the side, pelvis down), Stasik the mosquito wended his way home. He had asked the veterinarian, Akop the condor, to bandage the spot where...

Like Penelope

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

2 min

The Spirit of Madame de Genlis (A Spiritualistic Occurrence)

Russia

“It is sometimes much easier to call up a spirit than to get rid of it.” – A. B. CALMET I The strange adventure I intend to tell took place several years ago, and can now...

The Spirit of Madame de Genlis (A Spiritualistic Occurrence)

Nikolai Leskov

17 min

Russia

“— And you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my...

After the Dance

Leo Tolstoy

11 min

Russia

At the house of Naroumov, a cavalry officer, the long winter night had been passed in gambling. At five in the morning breakfast was served to the weary players. The winners ate with relish; the losers,...

The Queen of Spades

Alexander Sergeievitch Pushkin

14 min

Russia

When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the mysterious thralldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a long time before anyone noticed the evil peculiarities in him...

Lazarus

Leonid Andreyev

29 min

Russia

“Pavel Vassilyevitch, there’s a lady here, asking for you,” Luka announced. “She’s been waiting a good hour….” Pavel Vassilyevitch had only just finished lunch. Hearing of the lady, he frowned and said: “Oh, damn her! Tell...

A Play

Anton Chekhov

7 min

Russia

At 17 Crooked Street there lived an old woman. She had once lived there with her husband and son, but the son grew up and left home, and the husband died, leaving the old woman all...

How the Old Woman Tried to Buy Ink

Daniil Kharms

10 min

Russia

“To whom shall I tell my grief?” The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer...

Misery

Anton Chekhov

8 min

Russia

Poverty Brothers, what is the most fashionable word these days, eh? These days the most fashionable word around is, of course, “electrification”. I don’t deny the vast importance of shining a light on Soviet Russia....

Poverty | The Galosh

Mikhail Zoshchenko

6 min

Russia

Night. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee.” A little...

Sleepy

Anton Chekhov

9 min

Russia

A Fantastic Story Chapter I I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before....

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34 min

Russia

Ilya Ilych was injured. It happened in the evening, in the third act. Dressed in braided crimson livery, white stockings and shoes with buckles, Ilya Ilych was to go out on stage to hand the ballerinas...

The Extra

Anatoly Kuznetsov

34 min

Russia

An Unexpected Bender One day Antonina Alekseevna struck her husband with a rubber stamp and smeared his forehead with ink. The deeply offended Pyotr Leonidovich, Antonina Alekseevna’s husband, locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t let...

An Unexpected Bender | The Cashier

Daniil Kharms

5 min

Russia

From outside there came a soft knock at the door: once. Pause. And again—a bit louder and bonier: twice. Sutulin, without rising from his bed, extended—as was his wont—a foot toward the knock, threaded a toe...

Quadraturin

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

10 min

Israel

We arranged to meet at the Bagration Underground station and walk to Gorbushka to see a Siberian punk band. Gromov explained how I would recognize him: “I wear glasses, the bridge is held together by wire....

Dance of the Swans

Alice Bialsky

11 min

Russia

Trees cannot talk and they stand as if riveted to the spot, but they are alive nonetheless. They’re breathing. They keep growing for as long as they live. Even enormous old-man trees – they grow a...

Two Brothers

Evgeny Schwartz

23 min

Russia

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...

The Blizzard

Mikhail Bulgakov

20 min

Russia

Savitsky, the commander of the Sixth Division, rose when he saw me, and I was taken aback by the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose — his breeches purple, his crimson cap cocked to the...

My First Goose

Isaac Babel

5 min

Russia

I (From Pyotr Ivanitch To Ivan Petrovitch) Dear Sir and Most Precious Friend, Ivan Petrovitch, For the last two days I have been, I may say, in pursuit of you, my friend, having to talk over...

A Novel in Nine Letters

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

14 min