Our Collection – Page 3 – The Short Story Project

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

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

USA

Eight or nine years ago – I think it was summer 2012 – I found myself browsing the shelves at a bookstore in Tehran. Outposts of the local bookstore chain Shahr-e Ketab glitter like branches of...

The Translator I Never Wanted to Be

Mariam Rahmani

13 min

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

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

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

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

USA

The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...

A Mighty Nice Man

Patricia Highsmith

8 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

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

UK

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any...

A Scandal in Bohemia

Arthur Conan Doyle

34 min

UK

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number...

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Arthur Conan Doyle

39 min

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

USA

It’s still dark when the weeping erupts, so Mather knows it’s early. How early he isn’t sure, but he won’t be able to fall back asleep, so it doesn’t matter. He pulls the extra pillow over...

Rollingwood

Ben Marcus

30 min

France

It was in the midst of these gloomy shadows, in the stifling night that every moment seemed to intensify about him, that there began to shine, like a star lost in the dark abysm of space,...

The Piano

Romain Rolland

19 min

France

Louisa, who let no opportunity escape of earning a little money, used to go out as cook for exceptional occasions, such, as marriages or baptismal feasts. Melchior pretended to know nothing about it—it touched his vanity—but...

Visiting The House of The Rich

Romain Rolland

15 min

France

In the month of September, 185–, I arrived at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. My passage through the principal German cities had been brilliantly marked by balloon ascents; but as yet no German had accompanied me in my car,...

A Drama in the Air

Jules Verne

27 min

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

USA

But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future. Stephen Hawking, “The Future...

10 to the 16 to 1

James Patrick Kelly

36 min

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

Israel

In the summer of 1977, you moved to 90 Ahad Ha’am Street in Tel Aviv for one month. The summer was a real summer. There was no air-conditioning in 90 Ahad Ha’am. The entrance to the...

90 Ahad Ha’am

Yotam Reuveni

11 min

Israel

To Tami Berger In the corner café that had recently changed owners stood a parrot’s cage. A green cage with a domed top, a swing fixed inside it, and a slot and small drawer at the...

A Girl in the Café

Ronit Matalon

30 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

Germany

The following story is as true as anything from the world of science and the realm of the dead can be for the likes of us. Although you can’t see the screen itself, a folding screen...

A Dwarf’s Tale

Georg Klein

4 min

Israel

Once I ran away. It was in kindergarten. I had known for some time that the fence between the schoolyard and the adjoining public park had fallen over. A thicket of oleander grew behind it. One...

A Break in the Fence

Ariel Hirschfeld

5 min

Slovakia

She had been married for five years – and still nothing. Her relatives felt pity and compassion for her; it was not usual for women to be barren in her large family, where children had always...

A Child

Erika Olahová

5 min

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

Japan

One morning, after a fall of snow. Yasukichi sat on a chair in the physics teachers’ lounge, watching the flames in the heating stove. The flames licked up yellow one moment, then fell to sooty ruins...

The Cold

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

7 min

Israel

That summer was hotter than usual. The fan shook its head ‘no’ all day, and was of little use. Her mother was locked up in that place, her father was at his other home (which she...

Summer

Esty G. Haim

13 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

Gaza

I opened my eyes to the world in a city with a lifeless childhood. I opened my eyes in the battlefield. Nobody told me who the soldiers were, or what occupation is. I grew up having...

Endgame

Abdalhadi Alijla

4 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

It was the last summer before they gave the Sinai back to Egypt. I was thirteen and I drove with my parents and their friends down to Ras Burka. I think that must have been our...

Flies

Eshkol Nevo

10 min

Israel

“Did you hear about the girl?” the Candyland cashier, who resembled a human gummy bear, asked me. “You didn’t hear? She was brought to the emergency room early this morning. The orderlies are calling her ‘The...

S&M in the Holy Land

Roy Chen

17 min

Libya

I . . . am a cheap sock, I cost half a dinar. An industrial cooperative manufactured me, and my profit margin was redistributed among the elements of production. An ordinary man bought me, a manual...

The Story of a Sock

Muhammad al-Asfar

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

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

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

UK

A Note of Admiration Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical...

The Model Millionaire

Oscar Wilde

7 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

Canada

Diamond Cut Diamond EMILY, who had been pointedly ignored by the Murrays at breakfast, was called into the parlour when the meal was over. They were all there—the whole phalanx of them—and it occurred to Emily...

Emily Of New Moon – Chapter 5

Lucy Maud Montgomery

10 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

Spain

The first note the Alberts’ son furtively slipped into my pocket looked like a cryptic puzzle. The words were written in concentric circles and this is what they said: Angry casserole, Smuts or minks. Crosses or...

The Garden Window

Cristina Fernández Cubas

21 min

Spain

It was the talk of the town. What a miracle! It’s not every day that a man in his eighties goes to the altar with a fifteen year old. To be precise, Inesiña, the niece of...

Vampire

Emilia Pardo Bazán

6 min

Sudan

In front of me, I put a ream of white paper, a copper inkwell and a feather I snatched from my neighbour’s duck. I lit a candle and stuck it in the middle of the table....

Broca’s Area

Mohamed Hassan AL-Nahat

8 min

Palestine

Ever since I was a child, I dreamt of learning to play the guitar. With time, this passion turned into a weevil, a gluttonous one that nested in my brain, grew up as I grew and...

A Weevil

Khalil Nasif

1 min

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

Canada

Chapter I The House in the Hollow The house in the hollow was “a mile from anywhere”—so Maywood people said. It was situated in a grassy little dale, looking as if it had never been built...

Emily of New Moon

Lucy Maud Montgomery

10 min

Canada

A Watch in the Night Emily stood quite still and looked up at Ellen’s broad, red face–as still as if she had been suddenly turned to stone. She felt as if she had. She was as...

Emily of New Moon – Chapter 2

Lucy Maud Montgomery

15 min

Iran

It was the longest night of winter. At the bottom of the sea, an old fish gathered together 12,000 of her children and grandchildren and began to tell them this story: Once upon a time a...

Little Black Fish

Samad Behrangi

22 min

Canada

A Hop Out of Kin Douglas Starr lived two weeks more. In after years when the pain had gone out of their recollection, Emily thought they were the most precious of her memories. They were beautiful...

Emily of New Moon – Chapter 3

Lucy Maud Montgomery

17 min

Tunisia

On his way home from school, Munir bumped into his friend Nabil. Nabil was holding the long line attached to his paper kite and happily running with the wind. Nabil said to his friend Munir, who...

Kite

Youssef Rzouga

1 min

Canada

A Family Conclave EMILY wakened at daylight the next morning. Through her low, uncurtained window the splendour of the sunrise was coming in, and one faint, white star was still lingering in the crystal-green sky over...

Emily from New Moon – Chapter 4

Lucy Maud Montgomery

13 min