Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Austria

It has to be done, that’s clear, and today’s the day. Anne has an appointment – today, not tomorrow – and she’ll go there, and they’ll suck the embryo out of her. She’s going on her...

If That’s How It Is

Dorian Steinhoff

14 min

Poland

In the town of Taydarayda there once lived a tailor by the name of Mr Joseph Threddie. He had a little pointy beard just like a billy goat, and he was always jolly. He was very...

How Mr Threddie the Tailor Became King

Kornel Makuszyński

11 min

Mexico

Someone, probably the ticket inspector, told him that his was the only suitcase. No one else was going to Alquila today. There’s no way it can get lost. But Hernández insisted on taking it with him....

One Too Many

Emiliano Monge

9 min

Russia

“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard. “Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room. The whole family ran to the window, for they had been expecting their Volodia for hours. At...

The Boys

Anton Chekhov

9 min

Japan

According to Ashin’s “Essentials of Salvation,” the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land. In that Land the earth is made of emerald and the...

The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love

Yukio Mishima

24 min

Germany

‘From now on, I don’t want to know anything,’ said the man who no longer wanted to know anything. ‘I don’t want to know a thing.’ That’s easily said. It is easily said. And hardly had...

The Man Who No Longer Wanted to Know Anything

Peter Bichsel

5 min

Guatemala

69752. That he had it tattooed there, on his left forearm, so he wouldn’t forget it. That’s what my grandfather told me. And that’s what I grew up believing. In the 1970s, telephone numbers in Guatemala...

The Polish Boxer

Eduardo Halfon

16 min

Israel

In the geography lesson the teacher, Mr. Levy, was talking about the Yarkon, and for this reason Hefzibah locked herself in the Girls’ Room during the morning recess. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher...

Invisible Mending

Ruth Almog

20 min

Ireland

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its...

Araby

James Joyce

6 min

Germany

What you might think just after you’ve said goodbye to him and just before you leave the house: 1. What’s that photo on the wall? 2. Is that her in the photo on the wall? 3....

In View of the Geese

Kenah Cusanit

5 min

Spain

When I arrived in Brussels, the supposed end of the European dream was all the media could talk about. General levels of uncertainty had increased, as had violence on public transport – for instance, when one...

The Doorbell

Cristian Crusat

11 min

UK

It all began with Effie’s getting something in her eye. It hurt very much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark – only it seemed to have legs as well, and wings like a...

The Deliverers of Their Country

Edith Nesbit

19 min

USA

Mr. Weeks called me out again tonight, and I look back down the hall of my house. I left the kitchen light burning. This is an empty old house since the old lady died. When Mr....

Time and Again

Breece D'J Pancake

6 min

Catalonia

How quickly that dark line gets longer, how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate. CAVAFY, “Candles” (Tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) “It used to be that wars would thin the herd. Now that there’s peace,...

Engagement Ring

Jordi Nopca

11 min

Argentina

She called you two weeks ago. Just like that. Out of the blue. Today is Mother’s Day, and you’re going to see her again. You wanted to make as good a start to the day as...

You’re Only Bleeding

Matías Capelli

16 min

Slovenia

Cracks Many stories have happened. This is one of them. You have a wife, you have kids, you have a job, you have a car, you have a house in the suburbs. It appears you’ll...

Cracks | Mainland

Andrej Blatnik

3 min

Germany

At home, in my flat, in the three neat and prettily decorated rooms belonging to me and nobody but me, lives a little child that torments me. We’re so attached by now that I can’t get...

The Child

Antonia Baum

14 min

UK

In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a...

The Invisible Man

G.K. Chesterton

25 min

Israel

Mr. Harlamov was a big man. He was a fearless man too and when he sat himself down at the harmonium (which was a kind of piano played with a foot bellows, or a kind of...

Harlamov

S. Yizhar

9 min

Uruguay

It was the whole matter of the gifts that made her think back to that night. Whenever they fought and he threw her out of the house, he always made her return the gifts he’d given...

The Size of My Love

Fernanda Trías

16 min

Uruguay

It’s a rough summer morning in Misiones, with all the sun, heat and tranquility that the season can provide. Mother Nature, open to the skies, seems proud of herself. Like the sun, the heat, and the...

The Son

Horacio Quiroga

6 min

Italy

The Decameron: Day the Fourth, The Ninth Story SIR GUILLAUME DE ROUSSILLON GIVETH HIS WIFE TO EAT THE HEART OF SIR GUILLAUME DE GUARDESTAING BY HIM SLAIN AND LOVED OF HER, WHICH SHE AFTER COMING TO...

Roussillon’s heart

Giovanni Boccaccio

5 min

The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story

Italy

FEDERIGO DEGLI ALBERIGHI LOVETH AND IS NOT LOVED. HE WASTETH HIS SUBSTANCE IN PRODIGAL HOSPITALITY TILL THERE IS LEFT HIM BUT ONE SOLE FALCON, WHICH, HAVING NOUGHT ELSE, HE GIVETH HIS MISTRESS TO EAT, ON HER...

The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story

Giovanni Boccaccio

10 min

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