English
0 min 70 min
The Emperor Franz Joseph’s Portrait
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
The Prophetic Pictures
USA
“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. “He not only excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives lectures in...
The Prophetic Pictures
Nathaniel Hawthorne
20 min
The Deer in the Dream
China
A man was gathering fuel in the Cheng State when he fell in with a deer that had been startled from its usual haunts. He gave chase, and succeeded in killing it. He was overjoyed at...
The Deer in the Dream
Lieh Tzu
2 min
Blowing Up Trains
UK
{ Excerpts from Seven Pillars of Wisdom }   By November, 1917, Allenby was ready to open a general attack against the Turks along his whole front. The Arabs should have done the same in their...
Blowing Up Trains
D.H. Lawrence
15 min
The Queen of Spades
Russia
At the house of Naroumov, a cavalry officer, the long winter night had been passed in gambling. At five in the morning breakfast was served to the weary players. The winners ate with relish; the losers,...
The Queen of Spades
Alexander Sergeievitch Pushkin
14 min
The Diamond Necklace
France
The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of...
The Diamond Necklace
Guy de Maupassant
11 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
The Picture Horse
China
A certain Mr. Ts’ui, of Lin-ch’ing, was too poor to keep his garden walls in repair, and used often to find a strange horse lying down on the grass inside. It was a black horse marked...
The Picture Horse
Pu Sung-ling
2 min
The Fall of the House of Usher
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
The Real Thing
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
The Rocking-Horse Winner
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
A Simple Soul
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
After the Dance
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
The Decapitated Chicken
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
Batrachophiles and Batrachophobes
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
Corporal Billygoat and I
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
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
On the Day of the Crucifixion
Russia
On that terrible day, when the universal injustice was committed and Jesus Christ was crucified in Golgotha among robbers—on that day, from early morning, Ben-Tovit, a tradesman of Jerusalem, suffered from an unendurable toothache. His toothache...
On the Day of the Crucifixion
Leonid Andreyev
5 min
Rustic Chivalry
Italy
Turiddu Macca, the son of mistress Nunzia, when he came home from being a soldier, every afternoon strutted about the piazza with his bersagliere uniform and his red cap, that looked like a fortune-teller’s when he...
Rustic Chivalry
Giovanni Carmelo Verga
6 min
Gym Period
Germany
The military school of St. Severin. The gymnasium. The class in their white cotton shirts stand in two rows under the big gas lights. The gym teacher, a young officer with a hard, swarthy face and...
Gym Period
Rainer Maria Rilke
7 min
Before the Law
Czech Republic
Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment....
Before the Law
Franz Kafka
2 min
A Play
Russia
“Pavel Vassilyevitch, there’s a lady here, asking for you,” Luka announced. “She’s been waiting a good hour….” Pavel Vassilyevitch had only just finished lunch. Hearing of the lady, he frowned and said: “Oh, damn her! Tell...
A Play
Anton Chekhov
7 min
Lazarus
Russia
When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the mysterious thralldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a long time before anyone noticed the evil peculiarities in him...
Lazarus
Leonid Andreyev
29 min
The Cat that Walked by Himself
UK
Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was...
The Cat that Walked by Himself
Rudyard Kipling
16 min
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