Our Collection – Page 10 – The Short Story Project

Israel

In September everyone’s looking for an apartment. Especially in Jerusalem. Especially students. This is the busy season for Yochanan Dvir, apartment renovator and owner of a few of them himself. Two small apartments which he renovated...

Talitha Kumi

Yitzhak Auerbach-Orpaz

22 min

UK

There was once a lady who found herself in middle life with but a slight income. Knowing herself to be insufficiently educated to be able to practise any other trade or calling, she of course decided,...

Fortunatus Rex and co

Edith Nesbit

20 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

Chile

How could I serve myself from such distant plates, when the home had broken, when not even mother could be forced from the lips. How could I dine on nothing. César Vallejo I was born...

The Need to Be a Son

Andrea Jeftanovic

10 min

Israel

The last item on the shopping list was bread. Two o’clock in the afternoon. August. And the insistence to walk all the way to the bread shop. Specification is the sign of affluence and civilization; that...

The Thief

Sharron Hass

3 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

Spain

My sister always said that it was much better to have a niece or nephew than your own child. I suppose that my mother agreed with her. My sister said that with a nephew you got...

Oxytocin

Miguel Serrano Larraz

10 min

Israel

That summer, I’d go there sometimes, and this week, I went again. It was a hot day at the end of summer. A hot wind blew from time to time, stopped suddenly and returned suddenly, full...

Apples in Honey

Yehudit Hendel

11 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

Ireland

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its...

Araby

James Joyce

6 min

Germany

What you might think just after you’ve said goodbye to him and just before you leave the house: 1. What’s that photo on the wall? 2. Is that her in the photo on the wall? 3....

In View of the Geese

Kenah Cusanit

5 min

Spain

When I arrived in Brussels, the supposed end of the European dream was all the media could talk about. General levels of uncertainty had increased, as had violence on public transport – for instance, when one...

The Doorbell

Cristian Crusat

11 min

UK

It all began with Effie’s getting something in her eye. It hurt very much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark – only it seemed to have legs as well, and wings like a...

The Deliverers of Their Country

Edith Nesbit

19 min

USA

Mr. Weeks called me out again tonight, and I look back down the hall of my house. I left the kitchen light burning. This is an empty old house since the old lady died. When Mr....

Time and Again

Breece D'J Pancake

6 min

Catalonia

How quickly that dark line gets longer, how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate. CAVAFY, “Candles” (Tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) “It used to be that wars would thin the herd. Now that there’s peace,...

Engagement Ring

Jordi Nopca

11 min

Argentina

She called you two weeks ago. Just like that. Out of the blue. Today is Mother’s Day, and you’re going to see her again. You wanted to make as good a start to the day as...

You’re Only Bleeding

Matías Capelli

16 min

Slovenia

Cracks Many stories have happened. This is one of them. You have a wife, you have kids, you have a job, you have a car, you have a house in the suburbs. It appears you’ll...

Cracks | Mainland

Andrej Blatnik

3 min

Germany

At home, in my flat, in the three neat and prettily decorated rooms belonging to me and nobody but me, lives a little child that torments me. We’re so attached by now that I can’t get...

The Child

Antonia Baum

14 min

UK

In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a...

The Invisible Man

G.K. Chesterton

25 min

Israel

Mr. Harlamov was a big man. He was a fearless man too and when he sat himself down at the harmonium (which was a kind of piano played with a foot bellows, or a kind of...

Harlamov

S. Yizhar

9 min

Austria

It has to be done, that’s clear, and today’s the day. Anne has an appointment – today, not tomorrow – and she’ll go there, and they’ll suck the embryo out of her. She’s going on her...

If That’s How It Is

Dorian Steinhoff

14 min

Poland

In the town of Taydarayda there once lived a tailor by the name of Mr Joseph Threddie. He had a little pointy beard just like a billy goat, and he was always jolly. He was very...

How Mr Threddie the Tailor Became King

Kornel Makuszyński

11 min

Mexico

Someone, probably the ticket inspector, told him that his was the only suitcase. No one else was going to Alquila today. There’s no way it can get lost. But Hernández insisted on taking it with him....

One Too Many

Emiliano Monge

9 min

Russia

“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard. “Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room. The whole family ran to the window, for they had been expecting their Volodia for hours. At...

The Boys

Anton Chekhov

9 min

Japan

According to Ashin’s “Essentials of Salvation,” the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land. In that Land the earth is made of emerald and the...

The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love

Yukio Mishima

24 min

Germany

‘From now on, I don’t want to know anything,’ said the man who no longer wanted to know anything. ‘I don’t want to know a thing.’ That’s easily said. It is easily said. And hardly had...

The Man Who No Longer Wanted to Know Anything

Peter Bichsel

5 min

Guatemala

69752. That he had it tattooed there, on his left forearm, so he wouldn’t forget it. That’s what my grandfather told me. And that’s what I grew up believing. In the 1970s, telephone numbers in Guatemala...

The Polish Boxer

Eduardo Halfon

16 min

Israel

In the geography lesson the teacher, Mr. Levy, was talking about the Yarkon, and for this reason Hefzibah locked herself in the Girls’ Room during the morning recess. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher...

Invisible Mending

Ruth Almog

20 min

Colombia

Ricardo González loved to go to the cinema. His first major cinematic memory, many years ago now, was of a black-and-white film about cops and robbers. Before that he only went to the cinema occasionally, once...

The Spectator

Andrés Caicedo

12 min

Death of the Pugilist (Or, the famous battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw)

USA

Who was Burke? His beginnings. Born a caulbearer in the Bristol slums, in the quayside heap known only as “the Rat,” Jacob Burke, who would battle the great McGraw on that fateful day in 1824,...

Death of the Pugilist (Or, the famous battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw)

Daniel Mason

23 min

Germany

I’ve never had any grand experiences myself – which doesn’t bother me at all by the way; I’m not fool enough to envy some world-traveler, I’ve read too much in Seydlitz or the unabridged Brehm for...

Drummer for the Czar

Arno Schmidt

5 min

Germany

Why can’t we try Mike or Robert or Knosi? Because the guys say that Mike and Robert and Knosi are busy today and that we’ve no other choice, so up we go again, back up to...

Why Are We Going Back to Watan?

Andreas Stichmann

7 min

UK

Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about...

The Monkey’s Paw

W.W. Jacobs

15 min

Denmark

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening – the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded,...

The Little Match Girl

Hans Christian Andersen

4 min

Germany

Date: Mon, August 19 20:41:42-0700 (PDT) From: Henry To: Customer service Re: Your microwave To whom it may concern, I’m writing to you regarding a matter that may seem trivial, even irrelevant at first...

Your Microwave

Philipp Schönthaler

20 min

USA

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death. It was her sister Josephine who told her,...

The Story of an Hour

Kate Chopin

4 min

Uruguay

It was the whole matter of the gifts that made her think back to that night. Whenever they fought and he threw her out of the house, he always made her return the gifts he’d given...

The Size of My Love

Fernanda Trías

16 min

Uruguay

It’s a rough summer morning in Misiones, with all the sun, heat and tranquility that the season can provide. Mother Nature, open to the skies, seems proud of herself. Like the sun, the heat, and the...

The Son

Horacio Quiroga

6 min

Italy

The Decameron: Day the Fourth, The Ninth Story SIR GUILLAUME DE ROUSSILLON GIVETH HIS WIFE TO EAT THE HEART OF SIR GUILLAUME DE GUARDESTAING BY HIM SLAIN AND LOVED OF HER, WHICH SHE AFTER COMING TO...

Roussillon’s heart

Giovanni Boccaccio

5 min

The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story

Italy

FEDERIGO DEGLI ALBERIGHI LOVETH AND IS NOT LOVED. HE WASTETH HIS SUBSTANCE IN PRODIGAL HOSPITALITY TILL THERE IS LEFT HIM BUT ONE SOLE FALCON, WHICH, HAVING NOUGHT ELSE, HE GIVETH HIS MISTRESS TO EAT, ON HER...

The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story

Giovanni Boccaccio

10 min

Hungary

Autumn Translated by Mark Baczoni Sylvester Gács, a forester with the North Hungarian Forestry Service, patrolled the woods (every tree of which he knew by heart), doing the rounds of the pathways he himself had...

One Minute Stories

István Örkény

8 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

USA

Translated from the Original SATURDAY. – I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday...

Eve’s Diary

Mark Twain

12 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

Argentina

In February 2001 we found exactly what we were looking for: a wooden house in the suburbs of Miami with large windows overlooking a canal with green water that flowed into the Atlantic. We considered ourselves...

A House in the Burbs

Valeria Correa Fiz

12 min

A Protracted Evening. The Art of the Japanese Writer Yasushi Inoue

Germany

I owe my acquaintance with the works of the Japanese writer Yasushi Inoue to a young colleague with whom I once spent a long and arduous evening. At the time I had been living apart from...

A Protracted Evening. The Art of the Japanese Writer Yasushi Inoue

Volker Zastrow

11 min

Israel

A few months before Mother’s madness was officially announced, though there were hints that something out of the ordinary was happening, and our daily routine suffered small blows, life went on and the days were all...

Will Somebody Please Shut the Gate

Mira Magen

13 min

UK

There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they...

The Rocking-Horse Winner

D.H. Lawrence

21 min

France

For half a century the housewives of Pont-l’Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite. For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry,...

A Simple Soul

Gustave Flaubert

48 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

Uruguay

All day long the four idiot sons of the couple Mazzini-Ferraz sat on a bench in the patio. Their tongues protruded from between their lips; their eyes were dull; their mouths hung open as they turned...

The Decapitated Chicken

Horacio Quiroga

10 min

Spain

The most beautiful part of the city of Cimannis—a name which the local scholars interpreted as a shortened form of City Magnificent—the first thing that they showed to foreign visitors was the clubhouse; and the most...

Batrachophiles and Batrachophobes

Miguel de Unamuno

7 min

Czech Republic

In the course of the five or six years I spent in Russia I was several times killed and liquidated by various organizations and individuals. When I returned home to Czechoslovakia I found I had been...

How I Met the Author of My Obituary

Jaroslav Hašek

4 min

Czech Republic

In Mladá Boleslav there lived a stationer called Petiška. He was a man who respected the law and had lived, for longer than anyone could remember, across the road from the barracks. On the Emperor’s birthday...

The Emperor Franz Joseph’s Portrait

Jaroslav Hašek

6 min