Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Israel

We Weren’t actually at starvation’s door, although even that depends on how you look at it – the house was in ruins, windows missing, the living-room armchair shot to pieces, a crack in the wall, the...

A Thousand Shekels A Story

Orly Castel-Bloom

5 min

USA

In March I received an invitation to appear at IdiotFest, the second most prestigious event on the entire Idiot circuit. I called my mother. ─IdiotFest? ─Don’t you remember, Mom? It was in San Diego last year....

The Aspiring Idiot

Todd Hasak-Lowy

17 min

Ireland

When I think of Ireland, John-Paul Finnegan said as we stood on the deck of the ferry while it pulled out of Holyhead, I think of a limitless ignorance. And not just an ignorance, but a...

John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist

Rob Doyle

15 min

Russia

I – How to Survive with the Aid of Literature. Astride a Play to Tiflis. If someone asked me what I deserve, I would say in all honesty before God that I deserve hard labor....

Bohemia

Mikhail Bulgakov

9 min

Israel

Dayton Ohio, 2006 The plane lands at the airport. It’s a connecting flight with a stopover in Zurich, and the final destination is The Dayton-Wright Brothers International Airport. A total flight time of 15 hours,...

The Eternal Israeli

Nissan Shor

26 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

Austria

When Markus Kellmer got home from work, he found a naked woman on his living-room carpet. Her dishevelled hair reminded him of the way he had drawn crows’ nests and tree tops as a child; her...

The Corpse

Clemens J. Setz

8 min

USA

I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain’t no...

Haircut

Ring Lardner

19 min

Uruguay

My sister is going out with a guy who got famous for being on a reality show in the United States. She met him at the cafe where she works in L.A., where she’s lived since...

“Survivor”

Vera Giaconi

17 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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