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Abraham Hostel & The Short Story Project presents: | Absurd | American Lit | Animals | Arabic Lit | Classics | Comics | Coming of Age | Contemporary | Existential | Family | Female Authors | For the Kids | History | Humor | Latin Lit | Lgbtq | library | Love | Melancholy | Mother Russia | Politics | Realism | Speculative | Suspense | Travel |

Editor’s Choice

What is it that drives and compels people? I thought as I moved with the crowd of people toward the passport check. What gypsy blood moves me? I thought when I saw my bag x-rayed, and the jumble of books and clothes and all the blank and filled...
Finland

Hunger

Raija Siekkinen

6 min
A Chapter from the novel, Black Foam   (7)   He placed the suitcase lightly into the tray, and then took off to meet it on the other side. However, the soldier across from him waved him back as he scrutinized the screen in front of him. The...
Eritrea

Black Foam

Haji Jaber

6 min
I’d only been married six years when I started feeling tired and out of breath, especially when I was going up stairs. At first I thought it was a passing problem that would just go away. But it didn’t go away. In fact, it got worse. After doing...
Palestine

Globalization

Suheil Kiwan

6 min

New

The Universe of Things
Gwyneth Jones
17 min
http://The%20Universe%20of%20Things UK
The alien parked its car across the street and came...
A Strange Christmas Game
Charlotte Riddell
7 min
http://A%20Strange%20Christmas%20Game UK
It was the middle of November when we arrived at...
Fifty Pages, Tops
Etgar Keret
3 min
http://Fifty%20Pages,%20Tops Israel
Hilik arrives at about 12. “Am I interrupting you?” he...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |
Countries Background
UK 61
Slovakia 2
Turkey 1
India 4
Romania 3
Morocco 2
Nigeria 1

Audio Playlists
A Celebration of Mexico 1 A Celebration of Mexico 2 A Celebration of Mexico 3
A Celebration of Mexico
2 Stories on Female Rage 1 2 Stories on Female Rage 2
2 Stories on Female Rage
4 Long Stories for even Longer Roadtrips! 1 4 Long Stories for even Longer Roadtrips! 2 4 Long Stories for even Longer Roadtrips! 3
4 Long Stories for even Longer Roadtrips!
Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories 1 Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories 2 Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories 3
Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories
Coming of Age Around the World 1 Coming of Age Around the World 2
Coming of Age Around the World
Made in China: 3 Stories 1 Made in China: 3 Stories 2 Made in China: 3 Stories 3
Made in China: 3 Stories
What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection 1 What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection 2 What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection 3
What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection
Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories 1 Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories 2 Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories 3
Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories
See All Playlists

Hidden Gems

Ptosis
My father’s job, like many in this city, is parasitic. A professional photographer, he would have starved to death—along with his entire family—if it hadn’t been for Doctor Ruellan’s generous proposal which, in addition to providing...
Ptosis
Guadalupe Nettel
9 min
A Dwarf’s Tale Mexico
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
River of Honey, Lake of Milk Germany
Hadiya would visit us with her mother. On sunny days, we did our homework together under the grapevine; in winter, we did it by the stove. Her books were often torn: she didn’t like books or...
River of Honey, Lake of Milk
Ahmed Omar
5 min
The Cold Syria
For the first few hours they drove silently. His father simply sat there without saying a word, just sniffling from time to time. It seemed to him that he was doing it ostentatiously. He could see...
The Cold
Augustin Cupsa
8 min
A Grainless Mill Romania
“I haven’t written a word for a year (…) I’ve tried to write. Every day I sit at the typewriter, but I can’t get started.” – J.D Salinger “What’s a director if he can’t engage in...
A Grainless Mill
Ziad Abd el-Qadir
6 min
A Simple Soul Tunisia
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
A Child France
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
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When I received your vulgar and at the same time queer letter, my impulse for the first minute was to tear it into shreds, but I have preserved it as a curiosity.
/ A Novel in Nine Letters
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Sheila Heti
I have a mermaid in a jar that Quilty bought me at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. The mermaid’s all, “I hate you I hate you I hate you,” but she’s in a jar, and unless I loosen the top she’s not coming out to kill me.
/ Mermaid in the Jar
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Tobias Wolff
They had been young lovers many years ago when the future was still a distant concept for both of them.
/ Bullet in the Brain
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Clarice Lispector
And with that breath of life, a Lisette we didn’t know was suddenly revealed. Her eyes were much less wide, more secretive, more laughing, and her protruding and ordinary face had a certain ironic superiority.
/ Monkeys
Read story
Bram Stoker 
By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away, it now only came in fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
/ Dracula's Guest
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Our Classics

The Invisible Girl Slovakia
This slender narrative has no pretensions to the regularity of a story, or the development of situations and feelings; it is but a slight sketch, delivered nearly as it was narrated to me by one of...
The Invisible Girl
Mary Shelley
22 min
Batrachophiles and Batrachophobes UK
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
Rope Spain
On the third day after they moved to the country he came walking back from the village carrying a basket of groceries and a twenty-four-yard coil of rope. She came out to meet him, wiping her...
Rope
Katherine Anne Porter
11 min
Condensed Milk USA
Envy, like all our feelings, had been dulled and weakened by hunger. We lacked the strength to experience emotions, to seek easier work, to walk, to ask, to beg… We envied only our acquaintances, the ones...
Condensed Milk
Varlam Shalamov
6 min
The Yellow Wallpaper Russia
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic...
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
24 min
A Modest Proposal USA
For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.   It is a melancholy object to those, who walk...
A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift
10 min
From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes Ireland
Baker Street, January 1 Starting a diary in order to jot down a few useful incidents which will be of no use to Watson. Watson very often fails to see that an unsuccessful case is more...
From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes
Maurice Baring
5 min
The Sphinx Without a Secret UK
One afternoon I was sitting outside the Cafe de la Paix, watching the splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life, and wondering over my vermouth at the strange panorama of pride and poverty that was passing before...
The Sphinx Without a Secret
Oscar Wilde
5 min
Wild Honey UK
I have two cousins who live to the east of Salto, Uruguay. They’re grown men now, but when they were twelve years old, after enthusiastic readings of Jules Verne, they decided to embark upon the great...
Wild Honey
Horacio Quiroga
7 min
Gym Period Uruguay
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

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