Our Collection – Page 11 – The Short Story Project

USA

“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. “He not only excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives lectures in...

The Prophetic Pictures

Nathaniel Hawthorne

20 min

China

A man was gathering fuel in the Cheng State when he fell in with a deer that had been startled from its usual haunts. He gave chase, and succeeded in killing it. He was overjoyed at...

The Deer in the Dream

Lieh Tzu

2 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

Argentina

She has long legs like a pair of rivers coming together at the source, a deep lagoon: dark, wet and mysterious. But she also has a pair of repeating words, a tattoo on her back and...

The Curve

Hernán Ronsino

2 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

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

France

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of...

The Diamond Necklace

Guy de Maupassant

11 min

Israel

It happened in Guadeloupe, the island that lies in the Pacific ocean. The volcano of Guadeloupe conspired to erupt at any moment. Let the reader take shelter and wait, for what we are concerned with here...

Guadeloupe

Shoham Smith

6 min

China

A certain Mr. Ts’ui, of Lin-ch’ing, was too poor to keep his garden walls in repair, and used often to find a strange horse lying down on the grass inside. It was a black horse marked...

The Picture Horse

Pu Sung-ling

2 min

France

She saw me, she sighed, she guessed right away. “It was well worth it,” she said. She looked at me for a long time. “Lucie would like you to help her with her homework,” she said....

The Last Charge of the Russian Cossacks

Mathias Énard

4 min

USA

“Son coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu’on le touche il rèsonne.” – De Béranger. During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung...

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe

28 min

UK

When the porter’s wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced “A gentleman—with a lady, sir,” I had, as I often had in those days, for the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision...

The Real Thing

Henry James

42 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

The Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export

Germany

When Ferdinand Klingenreiter asked the audience, dear friends and family, boys and girls, to be quiet for his great illusion, some laughed; most went on talking. The Stadelmann girls interrupted their squealing chase and turned towards...

The Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export

Saša Stanišić

16 min

Poland

“Squad, stand easy… and fall out!” crowed Corporal Billygoat, in a voice that betrayed it had only broken lately. And at once, off duty now, he slapped Dragon on the back and said: “Hey, brother, go...

Corporal Billygoat and I

Tadeusz Konwicki

19 min

Germany

What do you want here? say the eyes. Stern eyes. The mouth just says, ‘Room number twelve is upstairs.’ Then she has to go, the hotel’s stern receptionist. Only loneliness is sleeping here tonight. No other...

Shades of Grey

Anna Prizkau

8 min

Germany

When they woke up in the morning the architect was already sitting at his computer. His office was in the right wing of the building; they lived in the left wing. The light was on all...

The Architect

Maxim Biller

10 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

Israel

Before Elyakum reached the age of seven, he had found the woman of his dreams and swore he would marry her. She was round all over, even her nose was round, not protruding very far from...

The Seamstress

Benjamin Tammuz

17 min

Israel

I used to meet him sometimes in the street or in the park opposite my house. Over the years we became friends in a way, and he would nod to me as old friends do, and...

The Dancer

Yehudit Hendel

8 min

USA

July 28 Duane Moser 1077 Pincay Drive Henderson, Nevada 89015 Dear Mr Moser On the afternoon of June 25 while on my last outing to Rhyolite, I was driving down Cane Springs Road some ten...

The Last Thing We Need

Claire Vaye Watkins

16 min

France

From my patio, I can see George at the edge of his pool, thirty yards down the hillside. A thicket separates us, which covers an incline of red, cracked earth, bordered on both sides by walls...

George’s Wife

Véronique Bizot

11 min

Germany

Holger’s parents had already gone to bed. The taste of unfamiliar toothpaste on my tongue, I was sitting on the duvet in my pyjamas. Holger was standing by the aquarium and feeding the guppies. ‘Oh no,...

Nowhere Else

Matthias Brandt

14 min

An Episode in the Life of Marshal de Bassompierre

Austria

At a certain point in my life, my services entailed crossing the little bridge across the Seine (for the Pont Neuf was not yet built at that time) at a certain hour several times a week,...

An Episode in the Life of Marshal de Bassompierre

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

11 min

Germany

I write: Vera’s coat has a button missing – the dog got it. She looks over my shoulder. One day he’ll get me, too, says Vera, you’ll see. I say: Don’t be silly. The dog...

Possible Paths

Margarita Iov

9 min

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

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

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

Israel

It was the third time we were going into Lebanon, and I wanted to go to the collection point with Barazani. I arrived at his metal shop and pushed open the door. A clot of dust...

Barazani

Yeshayahu Koren

17 min

Mexico

Back then I was just a child, and children aren’t generally prejudiced, even if most of them don’t know why they’re sitting at their wooden desks with a satchel full of pencils and exercise books listening...

Back then I was Just a Child

Guillermo Fadanelli

4 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

UK

More than a thousand years ago, in a country quite on the other side of the world, it fell out that the people all grew so very polite that they hardly ever spoke to each other....

A Toy Princess

Mary de Morgan

12 min

Greece

In memory of Frieda Liappa I dreamt that it was evening –and it was. I could hear nearby the bells from a flock, scattered here and there. The flock moved onwards, hidden behind the night...

An Almost Sky Blue Hand

Rhea Galanaki

4 min