English
0 min 70 min
A Pair of Eyeglasses
Italy
“As long as there’s the sun … the sun!” the voice of Don Peppino Quaglia crooned softly near the doorway of the low, dark, basement apartment. “Leave it to God,” answered the humble and faintly cheerful...
A Pair of Eyeglasses
Anna Maria Ortese
25 min
Deception or Dreams of the Man Who Didn’t Lose His Shadow  
Algeria
Was it merely deception or something more?   The paths were so exhausting, and the days were so hard! Wouldn’t it have been better to take the short-cuts? Nothing is of any use now. All that...
Deception or Dreams of the Man Who Didn’t Lose His Shadow  
Waciny Laredj
11 min
The Castle in the Woods
USA
Nature is a haunted house — but Art — is a house that tries to be haunted. -Letter excerpt, Emily Dickinson, 1876.   Chilled Autumn air settled over me, the dryness of it tickling my lungs....
The Castle in the Woods
Isabella Connor
9 min
The UFO, The Beach, and The Dead
Mexico
In the early nineties, The Beach of The Dead was little more than a greyish strip at one end of Boca del Rio, Veracruz’ twin city. Its burning sands were covered in spiny scrubs festooned with...
The UFO, The Beach, and The Dead
Fernanda Melchor
8 min
The Father Hole
Sweden
When Dad’s eyelids drop like a guillotine she pulls the car door shut with a click. He turns his gaze to the road, and from her shady spot in the backseat she can only see his...
The Father Hole
Andrea Lundgren
32 min
A Woman in a Space
Israel
A woman is workspace when will someone love you? Have you ever stayed seated in your chair until lunchtime, you drink lots of water- your body took the shape of a chair. A woman in workspace,...
A Woman in a Space
Tehila Hakimi
3 min
Lydia
Germany
We used to jump, Lydia and I, as high and as often as we could, hands high over our heads, wearing colourful dresses, our knees pulled up, our feet in stout shoes we were allowed to...
Lydia
Zsuzsa Bánk
10 min
The Pink Tuber
Russia
On Thursday Anna found out that she was pregnant. When she came home from work, she didn’t start dinner but instead sat at the tiny kitchen table, put her gaunt hands on the new oilcloth, and...
The Pink Tuber
Vladimir Sorokin
6 min
Scenario (A Chapter from a Novel)
Palestine
We didn’t stay long at the bar. After we got Melanie’s text, I had the feeling that each of us wanted the other to finish their drink so we could take off for one of our...
Scenario (A Chapter from a Novel)
Saleem Albeik
7 min
Soul Anatomy
USA
323 Juneberry Way, Deptford, NJ 08096 (856) 848-0501 Lmanfredo@comcast.net   In certain places there exists a permeating pointlessness to life with an aura of despair so acute that its inhabitants come to be unafraid, or, at...
Soul Anatomy
Lou Manfredo
29 min
Rock-n-Roll Flower
Mexico
Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. Monstrous the first vertebrate that succeeded in standing on two feet and thus spread terror among the beasts still normally and happily crawling close to the ground...
Rock-n-Roll Flower
Luis Carlos Fuentes Ávila
20 min
Black Foam
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
Autumn (A Fairy Tale)
Israel
On dark, stormy nights they would run through the sleeping streets, burning torches in their hands, and no one saw their faces and no one knew their names. And the echoes of the steps of fourteen...
Autumn (A Fairy Tale)
Lea Goldberg
3 min
The Dead
Ireland
Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the...
The Dead
James Joyce
62 min
An Old-Fashioned Christmas
UK
  CHAPTER I–THE PROMISE   “An old-fashioned Christmas.–A lively family will accept a gentleman as paying guest to join them in spending an old-fashioned Christmas in the heart of the country.” That was the advertisement. It...
An Old-Fashioned Christmas
Richard Marsh
22 min
Glory
UK
When Glory’s parents christened her Glorybetogod Ngozi Akunyili, they did not foresee Facebook’s “real name” policy, nor the weeks she would spend populating forms and submitting copies of her bills and driver’s license and the certificate...
Glory
Lesley Nneka Arimah
20 min
By His Things Shall You Know Him
Canada
I thought that Mr. Purnell was a little young to be a funeral director, but he had the look down cold. In the instant between his warm, dry handshake and my taking my hand back to...
By His Things Shall You Know Him
Cory Doctorow
20 min
He Saw Too
Iraq
Today’s Friday. I might be mistaken though, and it could be Saturday.   How stupid! Why couldn’t it be Sunday or Monday? It’s not worth thinking about or even looking at the calendar. I can’t even...
He Saw Too
Irada Al-Jubori
5 min
The Real Mother’s Song
USA
 “Win, win, win, win, win, win, win!!” was the incessant cry of our stepmother Sophie. It was the command that drove our household. She was a slight woman with a turned-up nose and a perky hairdo...
The Real Mother’s Song
Geoff Schmidt
9 min
The Dependant’s Tale as told to Marina Lewycka
Ukraine
The nighTMaRe always sTaRTs in the same way: a big man standing at the foot of my bed, shouting at me. ‘Get up! Hurry hurry hurry! Pack up your stuff! We’ve come to take you away.’...
The Dependant’s Tale as told to Marina Lewycka
Marina Lewycka
9 min
The Lover’s Tale as told to Kamila Shamsie
UK
John’s childhood ambition was to be a pilot. Let’s sit with that a while. A boy grew up, like so many other boys all over the world, watching the skies, imagining himself in the endless blue....
The Lover’s Tale as told to Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie
15 min
Glossolalia
USA
That winter, like every winter before it, my father woke early each day and turned up the thermostat so the house would be warm by the time my mother and I got out of bed. Sometimes...
Glossolalia
David Jauss
34 min
Nothing Ruins a Good Story Like an Eyewitness
USA
You got it wrong, son. You exaggerated the wrong things and failed to exaggerate the right things. I know you’re supposed to know your business, but you wrote your story from a long way off and...
Nothing Ruins a Good Story Like an Eyewitness
Matt Cashion
12 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
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