Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Israel

There are those who invent lies, and there are those who believe them. In an ideal world Jerry would spread his wings and fly away from there. For as long as he can remember himself,...

The Gift

Iftach Alony

6 min

Germany

Sergeant Guy Bohn was a lawyer in civilian life. In the winter of 1939 he had been transferred from active front line service as a soldier of France near the Luxembourg border because of a serious...

I Only Blast Under Written Orders

Alexander Kluge

5 min

Venezuela

You walk, you walk and you forget: that’s what she always says. Well, not in those exact words. It’s usually a more specific complaint: you didn’t call Pacheco, you didn’t check the Supercable contract, you didn’t...

Benjamin and the Walker

Krina Ber

11 min

USA

“What will we do now?” said the adjutant, troubled and excited. “Bury him,” said Timothy Lean. The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of their comrade. The face was...

Upturned Face

Stephen Crane

5 min

Russia

I When the waste and dreariness of her life become too much for Zivia, the younger and more embittered of the two unmarried Pozis sisters, she stops eating and washing. Wearing only her shift and...

Impoverished

David Bergelson

11 min

Argentina

The autumn felt more like summer than the summer had. I was wearing my blue silk dress, and I had the little Pekinese they’d given me for my birthday when I arrived at my boyfriend’s house....

The Voice

Silvina Ocampo

2 min

USA

Jim was the son of a cowboy, and lived on the broad plains of Arizona. His father had trained him to lasso a bronco or a young bull with perfect accuracy, and had Jim possessed the...

The Capture of Father Time

L. Frank Baum

11 min

Mexico

I met Olegario and his son William in the town cantina. I’d been on the run for weeks, travelling drunkenly from one place to another. I slept in the car and ate when I was hungry....

Sons

José Miguel Tomasena

9 min

New Zealand

The week after was one off the busiest weeks of their lives. Even when they went to bed it was only their bodies that lay down and rested; their minds went on, thinking things out, talking...

The Daughters of the Late Colonel

Katherine Mansfield

28 min

Russia

It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home...

The Lady with the Dog

Anton Chekhov

26 min

Israel

It is possible that you have lots of friends, or maybe you have only a friend or two. Your friends could be children, or they could be adults, or maybe your friends are dogs or cats...

The Granddad and the Dandelion

Yannets Levi

2 min

Ireland

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The...

Eveline

James Joyce

7 min

Israel

One day, when I was nine or ten years old, my uncle sent me alone from my father’s clothing shop to the post office in downtown Haifa. I’m not sure whether it was my idea or...

Memories from Haifa

Mati Shemoelof

4 min

Poland

My grandmother lived in Podlasie. The house wasn’t in the village itself. The neighborhood was known as “the colony”—scattered farms separated by stands of aspen and avenues of age-old, slender poplars. The cottage stood amid an...

Grandmother and the Ghosts

Andrzej Stasiuk

6 min

Kunfoosa the Terrible Or: How to tell the difference between harmless pets and very harmful jinn

Israel

Many years ago, before the days of highways-speed internet and underground tunnels, before natural gas drilling sites ever existed, human beings lived here side-by-side with jinn. Today it may sound strange, but back then it was...

Kunfoosa the Terrible Or: How to tell the difference between harmless pets and very harmful jinn

Tamar Hochstadter

5 min

Uruguay

Alicia’s entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers. A blonde, angelic, and timid young girl, the childish fancies she had dreamed about being a bride had been chilled by her husband’s rough character. She loved...

The Feather Pillow

Horacio Quiroga

5 min

Israel

1. AZIZ Our small room in Motel 6 smells like depressing sex that someone tried to scrub off with lots bleach. Gershon and I sit on the bed and start scribbling calculations on a napkin....

Three Men in America

Julia Fermentto

30 min

USA

On the third day of vacation, we woke in our rental cabins by the ocean to find half our flip‐flops were gone. One of the baby’s potato‐sized sandals was missing as well. By the door, out...

The Last Summer of Our Patriarch

Idra Novey

10 min

Israel

David Lugasi, I think, never knew how much he really loved the Western Wall until he saw it completely dismantled, stone by stone by stone, and piled onto the three trucks of his hauling and renovations...

The Man Who Moved the Western Wall

Uzi Weil

15 min

Israel

“Sir, I have something for you.” Mr. Zoom stopped walking and looked around. Cars whizzed by, people strode past, but a deliveryman reached out and handed Mr. Zoom a package. “Why me?” said Mr. Zoom...

See You at the Pole

Nurit Zarchi

4 min

USA

“FINE um whar you will en w’en you may,” remarked Uncle Remus with emphasis, “good chilluns allers gits tuck keer on. Dar wuz Brer Rabbit’s chilluns; dey minded der daddy en mammy fum day’s een’ ter day’s...

A Story About the Little Rabbits

Joel Chandler Harris

3 min

USA

True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I...

The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe

8 min

Colombia

Almost, almost there, but not quite. Something woke me up. A noise. I’m dripping wet, but I didn’t get there. I’m still half asleep. Nearly, but not quite. The wind is blowing through the coffee groves;...

Down the Path

Juan Cárdenas

9 min

Israel

I remember when my breasts developed. I would hold them in my hands, squeeze them in front of the mirror, examining them from every angle. I inspected the color of the nipple, checked for the first...

Breasts

Yoav Katz

27 min