Our Collection | The Short Story Project

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

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

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

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