Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Japan

My husband emerged from the bedroom, woken by the beeps at the end of the washing-machine cycle. ‘Morning . . . Sorry I overslept. Shall I take over?’ The weekend laundry was his job, but since...

A Clean Marriage

Sayaka Murata

20 min

Spain

On the Night of San Juan, Nana built a gigantic ﬁre. She built it in the middle of the garden, and it was several metres tall. On the Night of San Juan, you couldn’t breathe for...

Dogs of Summer

Andrea Abreu

12 min

Russia

At nine o’clock one morning in June, Captain Popov rang the doorbell. No one answered for a long time, but finally he heard the sound of scurrying. “Who’s there? Who is it?” a plaintive female voice...

The Fugitive

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

26 min

Sweden

Welcome to the world! Take a deep breath, cry your first cry and open your eyes. Well done. Now you’re ready to be fed, burped and taken care of. Take your first steps, say your first...

An Attempt at Nuclear Physics

Jonas Hassen Khemiri

7 min

Denmark

When Britta was depressed, nervous, and restless like this, so not even a complete reorganization of all the furniture in the house, or the preparation of a complicated dinner, could help her, there were only two...

Two Women

Tove Ditlevsen

7 min

USA

The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...

A Mighty Nice Man

Patricia Highsmith

8 min

USA

When I came back to Tucson for Christmas break, my mom was like, “You need to clean out your closet or you’re not going anywhere.” This was her way of being dumb about the fact that...

She’s not quite woman’s best friend

KILEY REID

10 min

Israel

Sometimes strangers come visit, friends of yours, parents themselves. I don’t have any problem with that, let them come, you have every right to invite them. But as long as they do, why do they have...

It was nice not to meet you

Ofir Oz

4 min

UK

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any...

A Scandal in Bohemia

Arthur Conan Doyle

34 min

UK

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number...

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Arthur Conan Doyle

39 min

UK

“I have some papers here,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, “which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance...

The “Gloria Scott”

Arthur Conan Doyle

31 min

USA

It’s still dark when the weeping erupts, so Mather knows it’s early. How early he isn’t sure, but he won’t be able to fall back asleep, so it doesn’t matter. He pulls the extra pillow over...

Rollingwood

Ben Marcus

30 min

France

It was in the midst of these gloomy shadows, in the stifling night that every moment seemed to intensify about him, that there began to shine, like a star lost in the dark abysm of space,...

The Piano

Romain Rolland

19 min

France

Louisa, who let no opportunity escape of earning a little money, used to go out as cook for exceptional occasions, such, as marriages or baptismal feasts. Melchior pretended to know nothing about it—it touched his vanity—but...

Visiting The House of The Rich

Romain Rolland

15 min

Ireland

“I really think,” said the Doctor, “that, at any rate, one of us should go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.” “Good!” said Considine. “After dinner we will take our cigars and...

A Gipsy Prophecy

Bram Stoker

14 min

USA

But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future. Stephen Hawking, “The Future...

10 to the 16 to 1

James Patrick Kelly

36 min

Romania

For Freddie, Brian, John, Roger, and Cătălina It’s complicated, complicated as hell. You fall head over heels for Elisabeta Ciupercă, your sexiest classmate in the eighth grade, a drum solo pounds in your chest cavity every...

39′

Radu Paraschivescu

21 min

Israel

In the summer of 1977, you moved to 90 Ahad Ha’am Street in Tel Aviv for one month. The summer was a real summer. There was no air-conditioning in 90 Ahad Ha’am. The entrance to the...

90 Ahad Ha’am

Yotam Reuveni

11 min

Israel

To Tami Berger In the corner café that had recently changed owners stood a parrot’s cage. A green cage with a domed top, a swing fixed inside it, and a slot and small drawer at the...

A Girl in the Café

Ronit Matalon

30 min

UK

There’s been more time to study her since the tribunal, but you can’t do it twenty-four-seven. Some people in this world still have jobs, and Jennifer’s boss would hit high C if she found out you’d...

59 Places to Fuck in Arizona

Rodge Glass

16 min

Germany

The following story is as true as anything from the world of science and the realm of the dead can be for the likes of us. Although you can’t see the screen itself, a folding screen...

A Dwarf’s Tale

Georg Klein

4 min

Israel

Once I ran away. It was in kindergarten. I had known for some time that the fence between the schoolyard and the adjoining public park had fallen over. A thicket of oleander grew behind it. One...

A Break in the Fence

Ariel Hirschfeld

5 min

Slovakia

She had been married for five years – and still nothing. Her relatives felt pity and compassion for her; it was not usual for women to be barren in her large family, where children had always...

A Child

Erika Olahová

5 min

Argentina

Six olives contain as many calories as a small steak. Could that be right? She’d read it out of the corner of her eye in a magazine belonging to a woman in a faded ski sweater...

A Centimetre or Two a Year

Matías Capelli

20 min