Our Collection | The Short Story Project

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…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

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

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

Russia

“To whom shall I tell my grief?” The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer...

Misery

Anton Chekhov

8 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

USA

‘Let–go–that–Oh-h-h! Please, now, will you? Don’t start drinking again! Come on–give me the bottle. I told you I’d stay awake givin’ it to you. Come on. If you do like that a-way–then what are you going to be...

An Alcoholic Case

F. Scott Fitzgerald

9 min

Taiwan

He turned his computer off and on again six times, took his first shower of the week, and went downstairs for some cold noodles and a packet of cigarettes. Only then did he dare believe what...

The Girl of his Dreams

Sabrina Huang

13 min

Puerto Rico

Sharon took advantage of the fact that we were washing the dishes to tell me she had been thinking about the day when Willie, my lover, would no longer be with us. “I can’t stop thinking...

The Garden

Luis Negrón

11 min

Israel

Lacking any alternative image, we turn to the moment of creation. The form bursting from the awkwardness of matter. No, not the awkwardness, the indifference towards being. This time, I am ready; this time, I’ve prepared....

Ishmael

Shimon Adaf

7 min

Turkey

Day had broken long ago. The mountains on whose peaks black clouds settled sparkled under a cold blue as though reporting that the pause given during the night by the snow that had snowed thus for...

The Snow Traveller

Ayfer Tunç

24 min

Poland

The best ideas always came to her at night, as if she were a completely different person at night than in the day. That’s trite, he would have said. He would have changed the subject, begun...

An Evening with the Author

Olga Tokarczuk

20 min

Malta

This time she’s building a city. The first city after eleven islands in a row, now gathered together in the soft red folder which, when her father goes out for a coffee in the evenings and she finds herself...

At Livia’s Bar

Pierre J. Mejlak

5 min

Israel

When you look at things from outside, everything seems like a sort of colorful jigsaw. A mosaic of price stickers covers the products in the supermarket: the oldest are white, the two-week-old ones are yellow, and...

Twice

Bella Shaier

13 min

Israel

She was so glad the wedding was over. The unadorned car stopped in front of the hotel at the far end of the esplanade. They stepped out, he and the driver, his best friend, hugged before...

Honey

Liat Elkayam

12 min