Our Collection | The Short Story Project

USA

“Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox wuz like some chilluns w’at I knows un,” said Uncle Remus, regarding the little boy, who had come to hear another story, with an affectation of great solemnity. “Bofe unum wuz...

Old Mr. Rabbit, He’s a Good Fisherman

Joel Chandler Harris

3 min

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

USA

The Paradise of Bachelors It lies not far from Temple-Bar. Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among harboring hills. Sick with...

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

Herman Melville

32 min

Russia

A Fantastic Story Chapter I I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before....

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34 min

USA

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. [Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be...

The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe

24 min

USA

I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron. “I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure...

I Stand Here Ironing

Tillie Olsen

9 min

Ireland

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

Argentina

The moment he heard the scream – he hadn’t heard the gunshot, or hadn’t interpreted it as such, because once you’ve got used to the endless cascade of noise from an internal patio you stop trying...

Doing Your Duty

Ariel Magnus

11 min

UK

Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one...

The Mark on the Wall

Virginia Woolf

12 min

USA

On one of the upper branches of the Congo river lived an ancient and aristocratic family of hippopotamuses, which boasted a pedigree dating back beyond the days of Noah—beyond the existence of mankind—far into the dim...

The Laughing Hippopotamus

L. Frank Baum

12 min

Russia

Night. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee.” A little...

Sleepy

Anton Chekhov

9 min

Mexico

Tusnesdor arrives at the hotel at night after a ten-hour transatlantic flight. It’s hot in his room, even though the air conditioner is turned up as high as it will go, and Tusnesdor regrets not having...

The Forbidden Doors

Fabio Morábito

13 min

USA

The Reverend Curtis Hartman was pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, and had been in that position ten years. He was forty years old, and by his nature very silent and reticent. To preach, standing...

The Strength of God

Sherwood Anderson

12 min

India

The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur. Though the village was a small one, there was an indigo factory near by, and the proprietor, an Englishman, had managed to get a post office...

The Postmaster

Rabindranath Tagore

8 min

Czech Republic

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might...

On the Tram

Franz Kafka

1 min

Italy

Shaken by his wife with an angry tug on the arm, jolted out of his sleep again that night, was poor Mister Anselmo. “You’re laughing!” Dazed, and with his nose still stuffy from sleep, and wheezing...

You’re Laughing

Luigi Pirandello

9 min

Bolivia

Natalia was late arriving at the bar, but she brought us a story, which we all accepted as a kind of safe conduct. This time my sister didn’t apologize for the hour; she knew she’d been...

The Red Ribbon

Magela Baudoin

12 min

Argentina

The Christmas that Father Christmas came to spend the night at my house was the last time we were all together. After that night Mummy and Daddy stopped fighting, but I don’t think Father Christmas had...

Father Christmas Spends the Night

Samanta Schweblin

7 min

UK

It was the middle of November when we arrived at Martingdale, and found the place anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless, there were no flowers save a...

A Strange Christmas Game

Charlotte Riddell

7 min

Romania

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

Japan

It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashōmon, waiting for a break in the rain. No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer...

Rashōmon

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

8 min

Lebanon|USA

Part One Miserable is the man who loves a woman and takes her for a wife, pouring at her feet the sweat of his skin and the blood of his body and the life of...

Madame Rose Hanie

Gibran Khalil Gibran

13 min

Spain

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, And when she came back she was nobody’s wife. (Leonard Cohen, «Famous Blue Raincoat») Inside a lost trailer in the desert, a man holds...

Famous Blue Raincoat

Aixa de la Cruz

9 min

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

USA

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until...

The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry

8 min