Our Collection | The Short Story Project

USA

“Let’s get the announcements out of the way,” said Ilka, the teacher, to her foreigners in Conversational English for Adults. “Tomorrow evening the institute is holding a symposium. Ahmed,” she asked the Turkish student with the...

Reverse Bug

Lore Segal

14 min

Egypt

After the evening prayer, curses came streaming out of Abdel Karim’s mouth, striking the village fathers and mothers and taking in Tantawi and his forebears on the way. The story was that Abdel Karim had hardly...

The Cheapest Nights

Yusuf Idris

6 min

Sudan

The vet gave a smile so meek and mild it was scary. “I’ve given the dog a sedative,” he said to Mrs Nahal. “He’ll calm down in ten minutes at most.” “Good job,” she replied. “The...

The Detective

Yasin Suleiman

9 min

Spain

The first note the Alberts’ son furtively slipped into my pocket looked like a cryptic puzzle. The words were written in concentric circles and this is what they said: Angry casserole, Smuts or minks. Crosses or...

The Garden Window

Cristina Fernández Cubas

21 min

Spain

It was the talk of the town. What a miracle! It’s not every day that a man in his eighties goes to the altar with a fifteen year old. To be precise, Inesiña, the niece of...

Vampire

Emilia Pardo Bazán

6 min

Sudan

In front of me, I put a ream of white paper, a copper inkwell and a feather I snatched from my neighbour’s duck. I lit a candle and stuck it in the middle of the table....

Broca’s Area

Mohamed Hassan AL-Nahat

8 min

Palestine

Ever since I was a child, I dreamt of learning to play the guitar. With time, this passion turned into a weevil, a gluttonous one that nested in my brain, grew up as I grew and...

A Weevil

Khalil Nasif

1 min

USA

“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...

The Other Woman

Sherwood Anderson

14 min

Canada

Chapter I The House in the Hollow The house in the hollow was “a mile from anywhere”—so Maywood people said. It was situated in a grassy little dale, looking as if it had never been built...

Emily of New Moon

Lucy Maud Montgomery

10 min

Canada

A Watch in the Night Emily stood quite still and looked up at Ellen’s broad, red face–as still as if she had been suddenly turned to stone. She felt as if she had. She was as...

Emily of New Moon – Chapter 2

Lucy Maud Montgomery

15 min

Spain

‘I’m sorry,’ says the girl. ‘You’re mistaken.’ I listen to her without batting an eyelid, nodding my head as if being mistaken were the most natural thing in the world. Because there’s no other explanation. I’ve...

The Woman in Green

Cristina Fernández Cubas

24 min

Israel

“The invention of the soul allows us to conceive of the body as a parasite. Hands can be objects that are devoid of feeling during the day but soft and tender at night. These actions do...

The Smuggler

Iftach Alony

7 min

It Will All Be Over by Next Rosh Hashanah

Israel

An old woman cleans my house. She sends the money she earns to her children and grandchildren – maybe her great-grandchildren too. They all live in a nice house in some evergreen part of Europe, by...

It Will All Be Over by Next Rosh Hashanah

Vered Singer

8 min

Palestine

“It was a pitched battle…” – a description he had often read out to his classmates from history textbooks but never thought he would one day use as he had just done, speaking to his friend,...

The Battle of Tel el-Hawa

Asmaa al-Ghoul

8 min

Gaza

I grew up suddenly like a tree. Once I had a dream when I was five years old. This dream visited me again. I slept for ten minutes that night. It was hard. The medicine that...

The Nightmare (a chapter from a novel)

Abdalhadi Alijla

7 min

Mexico

“Evangelina Segunda, you have the beauty of Artemis: Venus herself fiercely envies the innocence of your smile” Sunday Magazine, Issue 54, El Dictamen (13 February, 1983) The centre of Veracruz is full of ghosts, my...

Everyone’s Favourite Blonde

Fernanda Melchor

8 min

Israel

Like at other periods of metaphysical ardor, at this time too, the body (that of a woman, to be sure) wasn’t taken very seriously. This may be why even the dockworkers in the port that day...

Madame Bovary from Neveh Tsedek

Nurit Zarchi

10 min

Israel

Hilik arrives at about 12. “Am I interrupting you?” he asks. I gesture for him to come in, but he still hesitates on the threshold. “If you’re busy working,” he says, “I’ll come back later. I...

Fifty Pages, Tops

Etgar Keret

3 min

Syria

I learned of the character of drugs and the nature of poisons from an alchemist – an Arab alchemist from the outskirts of Baghdad who had come to work as a physician in the palace of...

The Veiled Man

Jan Dost

6 min

Egypt

You wanted me a slave bought and sold You wanted me in despair joyless. From the poem “Absent” by Palestinian poet Rashid Hussein. *** The distance between one floor and another was months and...

The Seventh Floor

Mohammed Salah Rajeh

3 min

Insurrection – A chapter from “The Gorilla”

Tunisia

About one o’clock in the afternoon. The wind is busy rolling along some beer-can that has been drained of its contents in the deserted street. A massive silence links the arch of the Sea Gate with...

Insurrection – A chapter from “The Gorilla”

Kamal Riahi

5 min

Israel

The day I moved from the city to the country my dog returned his spirit to the God who gave it. I do not know whether it was the shock of the move or just a...

Taqsim Hyena

Nir Soffer-Dudek

4 min

Israel

This city — this city is so fucking expensive that I can’t bear it. And it’s so fabulous that sometimes I can’t bear it. Expensive and horrible — that would be better. To enjoy it, you...

And Then — Nina Simone Began to Sing

Tasha Karluka

4 min

Sweden

Sometime in June, my back started to itch. I thought I’d been bitten by a mosquito or some other insect. That’s how it felt. It was always worst when I’d been out running and worked up...

Getting Ahead

Jonas Karlsson

31 min