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One Minute Stories Hungary
Autumn Translated by Mark Baczoni   Sylvester Gács, a forester with the North Hungarian Forestry Service, patrolled the woods (every tree of which he knew by heart), doing the rounds of the pathways he himself had...
One Minute Stories
István Örkény
8 min
The Last Charge of the Russian Cossacks France
She saw me, she sighed, she guessed right away. “It was well worth it,” she said. She looked at me for a long time. “Lucie would like you to help her with her homework,” she said....
The Last Charge of the Russian Cossacks
Mathias Énard
4 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 Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export Germany
When Ferdinand Klingenreiter asked the audience, dear friends and family, boys and girls, to be quiet for his great illusion, some laughed; most went on talking. The Stadelmann girls interrupted their squealing chase and turned towards...
The Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export
Saša Stanišić
16 min
The Dancer Israel
I used to meet him sometimes in the street or in the park opposite my house. Over the years we became friends in a way, and he would nod to me as old friends do, and...
The Dancer
Yehudit Hendel
8 min
George’s Wife France
From my patio, I can see George at the edge of his pool, thirty yards down the hillside. A thicket separates us, which covers an incline of red, cracked earth, bordered on both sides by walls...
George’s Wife
Véronique Bizot
11 min
Gethsemane Germany
…and found her sleeping with sadness. The first words in the morning, the underlined phrase in the book with a ribbon marker, a present from Marie, and the sun rises behind the chestnut trees of the...
Gethsemane
Ralf Rothmann
9 min
We Were Fishing For Rockets Germany
You pressed your Nazi grandfather’s signet ring into my hand and asked me to throw it in the sea or some other body of water. Because you couldn’t. And I said: I’m not doing that; he...
We Were Fishing For Rockets
Karen Köhler
9 min
Motherdeath Germany
Mother disappeared on the twentieth of August nineteen ninety-eight at around eleven fifty at night. At around eight thirty in the morning of the twenty-first of August nineteen ninety-eight, Father called and informed me: ‘Mother died...
Motherdeath
Michael Lentz
22 min
Misery Russia
“To whom shall I tell my grief?”   The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer...
Misery
Anton Chekhov
8 min
An Almost Sky Blue Hand Greece
In memory of Frieda Liappa   I dreamt that it was evening –and it was. I could hear nearby the bells from a flock, scattered here and there. The flock moved onwards, hidden behind the night...
An Almost Sky Blue Hand
Rhea Galanaki
4 min
An Alcoholic Case USA
‘Let–go–that–Oh-h-h! Please, now, will you? Don’t start drinking again! Come on–give me the bottle. I told you I’d stay awake givin’ it to you. Come on. If you do like that a-way–then what are you going to be...
An Alcoholic Case
F. Scott Fitzgerald
9 min
The Garden Puerto Rico
Sharon took advantage of the fact that we were washing the dishes to tell me she had been thinking about the day when Willie, my lover, would no longer be with us. “I can’t stop thinking...
The Garden
Luis Negrón
11 min
The Girl of his Dreams Taiwan
He turned his computer off and on again six times, took his first shower of the week, and went downstairs for some cold noodles and a packet of cigarettes. Only then did he dare believe what...
The Girl of his Dreams
Sabrina Huang
13 min
Ishmael Israel
Lacking any alternative image, we turn to the moment of creation. The form bursting from the awkwardness of matter. No, not the awkwardness, the indifference towards being. This time, I am ready; this time, I’ve prepared....
Ishmael
Shimon Adaf
7 min
The Snow Traveller Turkey
Day had broken long ago. The mountains on whose peaks black clouds settled sparkled under a cold blue as though reporting that the pause given during the night by the snow that had snowed thus for...
The Snow Traveller
Ayfer Tunç
24 min
An Evening with the Author Poland
The best ideas always came to her at night, as if she were a completely different person at night than in the day.  That’s trite, he would have said.  He would have changed the subject, begun...
An Evening with the Author
Olga Tokarczuk
20 min
At Livia’s Bar Malta
This time she’s building a city. The first city after eleven islands in a row, now gathered together in the soft red folder which, when her father goes out for a coffee in the evenings and she finds herself...
At Livia’s Bar
Pierre J. Mejlak
5 min
Twice Israel
When you look at things from outside, everything seems like a sort of colorful jigsaw. A mosaic of price stickers covers the products in the supermarket: the oldest are white, the two-week-old ones are yellow, and...
Twice
Bella Shaier
13 min
Honey Israel
She was so glad the wedding was over. The unadorned car stopped in front of the hotel at the far end of the esplanade. They stepped out, he and the driver, his best friend, hugged before...
Honey
Liat Elkayam
12 min
Prenzlauer Berg by Night (Nothing Doing) Germany
That night I ran into the fox again at the corner of my road, just after one. And like the last time, he stopped and turned his head towards me and we stared at each other...
Prenzlauer Berg by Night (Nothing Doing)
Annett Gröschner
17 min
Safe Passage USA
THE GRANDMOTHERS — dozens of them — find themselves at sea. They do not know how they got there. It seems to be after­noon, the glare from the sun keeps them squinting. They wander carefully, canes...
Safe Passage
Ramona Ausubel
15 min
A Pair of Silk Stockings USA
Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie...
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Kate Chopin
5 min
Monkeys Brazil
That first time we had a marmoset in the house was around New Year’s. We had no running water and no maid, people were lining up to buy meat, the summer heat had exploded—and that was...
Monkeys
Clarice Lispector
3 min
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