Our Collection – Page 24 – The Short Story Project

Germany

It was the end of January, not long after the Christmas holidays, when the fat girl came to me. That winter I had started lending books to the children from the neighbourhood, who were supposed to...

The Fat Girl

Marie Luise Kaschnitz

10 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

Germany

It was a Wednesday and time for my milk bath. But the light white liquid in angular packs – sucked from udders in farmyards, purloined from bovines, diversely digested from greenest grasses for calves, stirred and...

Milkface

Jan Snela

6 min

Germany

The Sankt Johannesweide Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic encompasses spacious grounds. Patients have access to this Lower Bavarian gem among mental institutions from seven in the morning until six in the evening, five days a week. For the...

It’s Me

Kristina Schilke

9 min

Germany

…and found her sleeping with sadness. The first words in the morning, the underlined phrase in the book with a ribbon marker, a present from Marie, and the sun rises behind the chestnut trees of the...

Gethsemane

Ralf Rothmann

9 min

Germany

Fritz had met ‘that Hilda woman’ in a bar called Paradise Now – sheer chance, really. He never usually went to places like that. For years he had been rotating among three or four pubs and...

Sloth

Eva Menasse

13 min

Germany

You pressed your Nazi grandfather’s signet ring into my hand and asked me to throw it in the sea or some other body of water. Because you couldn’t. And I said: I’m not doing that; he...

We Were Fishing For Rockets

Karen Köhler

9 min

Germany

Mother disappeared on the twentieth of August nineteen ninety-eight at around eleven fifty at night. At around eight thirty in the morning of the twenty-first of August nineteen ninety-eight, Father called and informed me: ‘Mother died...

Motherdeath

Michael Lentz

22 min

Argentina

The door of the bus opened. From her seat, Elena watched the passengers climb in. “Where does he think all those people are going to go?” she asked her daughter, who was sitting next to the...

The Secret

Alejandra Laurencich

6 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

Israel

When Croco Dancy, the little witch, finished school, she had to take her final exam. The principal put two forks on the table in front of her and said: “Now enchant them. You remember what we...

Croco Dancy

Nurit Zarchi

6 min

Cuba

He was a famous salsa singer. She collected things and did occasional tattoos. He was married to a rich Japanese businesswoman. She had a French lover. They met by chance. She was trying to convince a...

The Collector

Karla Suárez

9 min

Israel

In those days I talked a lot about weapons. There was Alex, the lone soldier who lived with the old lady. It was unclear whether they were related. On Friday afternoons Alex was always out on...

Copy and Paste

Yoav Rosen

11 min

Russia

On that terrible day, when the universal injustice was committed and Jesus Christ was crucified in Golgotha among robbers—on that day, from early morning, Ben-Tovit, a tradesman of Jerusalem, suffered from an unendurable toothache. His toothache...

On the Day of the Crucifixion

Leonid Andreyev

5 min

Italy

Turiddu Macca, the son of mistress Nunzia, when he came home from being a soldier, every afternoon strutted about the piazza with his bersagliere uniform and his red cap, that looked like a fortune-teller’s when he...

Rustic Chivalry

Giovanni Carmelo Verga

6 min

Does Anyone Care about the Dust at Hemingway’s House?

Mexico

When he woke up, Ana had left, and he had an idea for a story. He reached for his glasses on the bedside table, which was actually just a shelf because their bedroom only had enough...

Does Anyone Care about the Dust at Hemingway’s House?

José Miguel Tomasena

6 min

Israel

1. A month before Independence Day, 2048 The Chief Scientist of the Weizmann Institute took a deep breath and turned on the secret switch on the back of the Hitler. The Hitler blinked. And blinked...

Another Love Story

Uzi Weil

11 min

Germany

The military school of St. Severin. The gymnasium. The class in their white cotton shirts stand in two rows under the big gas lights. The gym teacher, a young officer with a hard, swarthy face and...

Gym Period

Rainer Maria Rilke

7 min

Chile

Romina had been staring at him, that was true. She had been staring at him from the other checkout line at the supermarket. And, finally, she’d said to him, “Nice to see you.” Then she corrected...

Gorillas in the Congo

Alejandra Costamagna

3 min

USA

There’s a handsaw hanging on the wall of my living room, a house key from a giant’s pocket. It’s been there a long time. “What’s your saw for?” people ask, and I say, “It’s not my...

Some Terpsichore

Elizabeth McCracken

18 min

Jacob Wallenstein, Notes for a Future Biography

Israel

Faster than light space travel to distant galaxies has been proven impossible. The existence of other planets or alien races, therefore, remains mere conjecture as these cannot be reached or contacted. Miraculous machines that let you...

Jacob Wallenstein, Notes for a Future Biography

Shay Azoulay

10 min

Canada

These notes were found in a leather binder, written on loose-leaf paper of good quality. The binder was stuffed in an old trunk, underneath a moth-eaten fox fur, small black records, many broken needles, tattered bits...

Notes From a Spider

Camilla Grudova

16 min

Czech Republic

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment....

Before the Law

Franz Kafka

2 min

Brazil

The taxi cab drove all over town. The driver was leering at me, telling stupid jokes to get my attention. I waited until I had finished my cigarette and asked him to pull over at the...

Funny Valentine

Paulo Scott

4 min