Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Tunisia

“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

Israel

He played his role well. He showed no sign that he knew what was going on behind his back. He could be truly satisfied with himself. And when Bennet and Yossi Cohen told him why they...

The Opportunity

Iftach Alony

15 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

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

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

The Enigmatic Crime of the Signals Private

Iraq

Gentlemen, my name is Jamal Ahmad. I work as a signals private in Forward Reconnaissance Unit 312, engaging the American enemy in the south. I confess in your presence, and I am of sound mind,...

The Enigmatic Crime of the Signals Private

Ali Badr

7 min

Israel

I had headed out to buy a pack of cigarettes and a few tomatoes, and there was a black shoe in the entrance to the building. A black shoe, just one, on the second tile beyond...

The Shoe

Hisham Naffa

5 min

Spain

I’ve always enjoyed everyday violence. I remember one incident in particular: broken glass in the dark. I’m not certain that it’s a real memory but when I relive the scene, I find it hard to contain...

In Praise of the Hurricane

Alejandro Morellón

4 min

Argentina

The giant is starting to rot and Minerval still has no news from the man that’s dreaming it. The programmer must be sick, she thinks: if he were dead the forest would dissolve and then the...

Inside Outdoors

Martín Felipe Castagnet

7 min

Iraq

In the year 3000AD, after many years of wars – world wars, civil wars, religious wars – after the heavens grew angry and smote the waters with meteorites from a vengeful hell, then there came thunderbolts,...

Extinction

Adham Adel

3 min

UK

I was an utterly unexceptional child of the twenty-ninth century, comprehensively engineered for emortality while I was still a more-or-less inchoate blastula and decanted from an artificial womb in Naburn Hatchery in the county of York...

Mortimer Gray’s History of Death

Brian Stableford

10 min

Colombia

For Carlos, for our hunger As a boy I was hungry, bam. I came home running, jumping, and my mother would say: “Cut it out! Don’t move so much or you’ll be even hungrier,” but...

Like Hunger, Like Love

Giuseppe Caputo

12 min

Palestine

I could smell the stench of death. From the first shades of darkness, I smelt the stench of death. A stench above me, a stench below me. Wherever I turned, I smelt the same stench. A...

Nightly Lament

Naji Daher

5 min

Israel

I remember a tree. Its crown awning the path. I remember a large trunk, thicker than any I had seen before. I remember roots cleaving the black earth, bursting it asunder, like snakes fighting free and...

Close to the Body – Fifth Place

Sarit Elkon

9 min

USA

Tommy’s cousin Gabe. Tommy’s distant cousin Gabe from Stillwater, Minnesota. Tommy’s cousin Gabe, related to my husband through divorce and remarriage, in lieu of actual blood, who arrives on my front porch at dinnertime with a...

Gabe

Holiday Reinhorn

7 min

Tunisia

Jalal wasn’t happy unless he was wreaking havoc. He was the village’s fearsome little devil. At any time he might raid the neighbours’ chicken coops and rabbit hutches. Then we’d see him grilling the meat outdoors,...

Its Name is ‘Bird’

Kamal Riahi

3 min

Sudan

Citizen Jabir Sabeel awoke to the alarm of his Nokia mobile phone at exactly 6:05. He tried, like every morning, to cover his face with a pillow, but he felt an awful weakness. He could not...

Jabir Sabeel

Mansour Mohammad El Souwaim

2 min

Russia

On Thursday Anna found out that she was pregnant. When she came home from work, she didn’t start dinner but instead sat at the tiny kitchen table, put her gaunt hands on the new oilcloth, and...

The Pink Tuber

Vladimir Sorokin

6 min

Faroe Islands

A runner asked me one morning on my way to work, “Hey, you. Can you tell me what time it is?” I replied, “Ten to.” “To what?” he asked. I stared at him briefly. “To eight,”...

Some People Run in Shorts

Sólrún Michelsen

7 min

Japan

He was a young socialist. His father, a minor official, had thus threatened to disown him. Yet he had remained true to his convictions, for he was possessed of both burning zeal and supportive friends. They...

The Socialist

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

2 min

Israel

High up, stretching into the sky, loomed the tower of the fair princess. It was made of pure crystal and its pinnacle was bedecked with gold and precious stones. All around it, a multi-hued, large rose...

The Rose Garden (A Fairy Tale)

Lea Goldberg

7 min