Our Collection – The Short Story Project

UK

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at...

Rain

William Somerset Maugham

60 min

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

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

UK

People are accustomed to think of Somerset as a country of deep, bosky bays, sunny coves, woods, moorlands, but Hemerton was in itself sufficient to blur this bland illusion. It lay a mile and a half...

Hodge

Elinor Mordaunt

31 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

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

Israel

My father believed in Marxist karma as a thrilling destiny that was tailored to the measurements of his short, solid body. He viewed the world through defiant, eroding eyes, as if endowed with the ability to...

The First Of May

Iftach Alony

3 min

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

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

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

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

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

A Short Story Writer Who doesn’t Obey Army Orders

Palestine

As I was sitting in a taxi stuck in a queue of cars at the Atara Israeli army checkpoint, heading to Nablus to meet a beautiful widow I’d got to know on Facebook, it struck me...

A Short Story Writer Who doesn’t Obey Army Orders

Ziad Khadash

3 min

Israel

“Ana bahib al-bahar”, I love the sea, the girl said. They were walking, stumbling along on the sand, four children and one grown woman. Backs, shoulders and hands were laden with backpacks and bags, the woman’s...

Seeing them see the sea

Ilana Hammerman

8 min

Gaza

I grew up suddenly like a tree. Once I had a dream when I was five years old. This dream visited me again. I slept for ten minutes that night. It was hard. The medicine that...

The Nightmare (a chapter from a novel)

Abdalhadi Alijla

7 min

Syria

I learned of the character of drugs and the nature of poisons from an alchemist – an Arab alchemist from the outskirts of Baghdad who had come to work as a physician in the palace of...

The Veiled Man

Jan Dost

6 min

Egypt

You wanted me a slave bought and sold You wanted me in despair joyless. From the poem “Absent” by Palestinian poet Rashid Hussein. *** The distance between one floor and another was months and...

The Seventh Floor

Mohammed Salah Rajeh

3 min

Iraq

The waiter at the Café Au Chai de l’Abbaye, Claude, asked me to finish my drink quickly. It was a quarter past two in the morning and he had to close up the café. I walked...

Two Royalists in Quatorze Juillet (a chapter from “An Iraqi in Paris”)

Samuel Shimon

19 min

Sudan

The sands lolled and swam in the sun’s blazing rays all day, then when darkness fell, they patiently waited for the sun to rise. As far as the eye could see, the sands swelled in every...

The Route through Purgatory

Omayma Abdullah

7 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

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

The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place

USA

Mom gave me a block of cheddar cheese and a sleeve of Fig Newtons when I left home for California in August of 1983. Apparently back then, when crossing the country alone in an unreliable foreign...

The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place

Mimi Broihier

9 min

Eritrea

A Chapter from the novel, Black Foam (7) He placed the suitcase lightly into the tray, and then took off to meet it on the other side. However, the soldier across from him waved...

Black Foam

Haji Jaber

6 min

Israel

“I have not yet begun to fight!” John Paul Jones 1 The road descends all the way to the sea, as though the whole world was a huge basin where everything drove, sailed, glided...

And The Sea Is Not Full

Edna Shemesh

11 min

UK

It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was...

The Tree of Knowledge

Henry James

23 min

Palestine

When Suzanne came back from Switzerland, she’d left three-quarters of her body weight behind. That wasn’t her only loss, however, or the most significant. And I don’t think she’d object if I told you that losing...

Lucerne Tunnel

Khalil Nasif

3 min

The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith

Scotland

The first thing that happens, you tell me, is that school stops. We are meeting in a room in a London university so that you can tell me, in anodyne safe surroundings, a bit about your...

The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith

Ali Smith

19 min

USA

One of the robots offered to carry Pico for the last hundred meters, on its back or cradled in its padded arms; but she shook her head emphatically, telling it, “Thank you, no. I can make...

Guest of Honor

Robert Reed

47 min

The Lorry Driver’s Tale as told to Chris Cleave

UK

we aRen’T aT all like you. They keep us apart, for your protection. There’ll be a blue sign at the entrance to any ferry port or motorway services: you take this lane and we’ll take that....

The Lorry Driver’s Tale as told to Chris Cleave

Chris Cleave

13 min

USA

As soon as they called the First Class passengers I stepped to the head of the line, hurried down to my seat and braced myself for the crowd that came slumping past minutes later with their...

Looking for Service

Nathan Oates

28 min

Syria

As soon as he saw his friend, who had just arrived from back home, in the airport arrivals lounge, he asked him, “Did you bring it?” His friend gestured to the backpack hanging off of his...

A Handful of Dirt

Jan Dost

8 min

Iraq

When I pulled Teresa’s postcard from the mailbox it was three in the afternoon. I didn’t read it at first, just glanced at it quickly as I stepped into the house, the card still clutched in...

Wars in Distant Lands

Najem Wali

22 min

Israel

1. AZIZ Our small room in Motel 6 smells like depressing sex that someone tried to scrub off with lots bleach. Gershon and I sit on the bed and start scribbling calculations on a napkin....

Three Men in America

Julia Fermentto

30 min

UK

“In the year 17__, having for some time determined on a journey through countries not hitherto much frequented by travellers, I set out, accompanied by a friend, whom I shall designate by the name of Augustus...

Fragment of a Novel

Lord Byron

7 min

Germany|Turkey

A Turkish philosopher from Istanbul once visited me in Berlin. He was only there for a few days. He looked at the street and said quietly, ‘I don’t think I could live here.’ Not the...

My Istanbul

Emine Sevgi Özdamar

10 min

It Would Be Better If Some Continents Had Never Been Discovered. Europe, For Instance, Has Never Been Anything But Trouble.

Germany

There often used to be two of us. Three of us. Four, five, or six. I had brothers, sisters, a tarantula. Parents, yes, them too. Plus there was my Uncle Nikolai and the guy from the...

It Would Be Better If Some Continents Had Never Been Discovered. Europe, For Instance, Has Never Been Anything But Trouble.

Michel Decar

8 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

Ireland

You never saw such surprise as that of the people of Ros Dha Loch when they heard that Nora, daughter of Marcus Beag, was to go to England. A sister of hers was already over there,...

Nora, daughter of Marcus Beag

Pádraic Ó Conaire

18 min

Scotland

The trader accustomed to the manners of Eastern Polynesia has a lesson to learn among the Gilberts. The ridi is but a spare attire; as late as thirty years back the women went naked until marriage;...

Husband and Wife

Robert Louis Stevenson

10 min

UK

{ Excerpts from Seven Pillars of Wisdom } By November, 1917, Allenby was ready to open a general attack against the Turks along his whole front. The Arabs should have done the same in their...

Blowing Up Trains

D.H. Lawrence

15 min

Germany

Later in the night he saw, strangely, the picture of himself as he had been before she came. He thought: ‘She has power to wake the dead.’ –Karen Blixen, “Tempests” Airport, present day, night-time In...

The Beautiful Thieves

Martin Kluger

15 min

Bolivia

They were drunk when he proposed it. That they go to a church in some little town and ask a priest to marry them on the spot, then return to Guan Zhou and keep drinking like...

I Pray For You

Liliana Colanzi

4 min

Bolivia

After passing a sign that said they’d soon be entering Natchez Trace, Jorge told his father that it would be a good idea to stop for petrol before they entered the park. His father nodded. For...

Faulkner

Edmundo Paz Soldán

6 min

Australia

I always wanted a girl. There were places, shops almost, where you could get a girl at any time of the day and they even remembered your name. But I wanted a girl that I didn’t...

The Real Cambodia

Laura Jean McKay

11 min

Germany

We stood with Gerschom Scholem at the grave of his parents and brothers in the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee. It was cold – it was December. Gerschom Scholem and Fania, his wife, were wearing light coats,...

Double Grave

Barbara Honigmann

8 min

Spain

The incident with my wife occurred during an excursion into the jungle. It was an overwhelmingly green afternoon, the kind of thing you boast about to your guests. (“The sun that evening was incredible, wasn’t it?...

What’s Wrong, Honey?

Matías Candeira

5 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

Romania

For the first few hours they drove silently. His father simply sat there without saying a word, just sniffling from time to time. It seemed to him that he was doing it ostentatiously. He could see...

The Cold

Augustin Cupsa

8 min

Spain

For Isa and Germán She was going to get married, she said. And then she started to laugh. She’d decided to drop out of university halfway through the year, weren’t expecting that, were we? Sofia...

About the Wedding

Eloy Tizón

10 min

Turkey

Day had broken long ago. The mountains on whose peaks black clouds settled sparkled under a cold blue as though reporting that the pause given during the night by the snow that had snowed thus for...

The Snow Traveller

Ayfer Tunç

24 min

Israel

Paul Nimoro was Japanese. He was many things; but above all, he was Japanese and he valued the qualities he knew he had inherited‒ precision, self-discipline and along with them, perhaps less visible but still present...

Dune

Dorit Peleg

13 min

Israel

I’m standing in front of the gate leading into the yard of the retirement home. I was standing there two hours ago but I didn’t go in. I found a café on a nearby street and...

Retirement Home for War Heroes, Warsaw

Itamar Orlev

10 min

Finland

What is it that drives and compels people? I thought as I moved with the crowd of people toward the passport check. What gypsy blood moves me? I thought when I saw my bag x-rayed, and...

Hunger

Raija Siekkinen

6 min

Israel

He placed his notepad on his knee and wrote: Cloudy. The smell of gasoline and garbage bins. Then he looked out the window again to verify that there was nothing he had failed to note. The bus...

To Jaffa

Ayman Sikseck

7 min