Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Germany

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

Mexico

We only learned about the curse three months after Mom had sold our apartment, bought this land, and unceremoniously upped and moved us here. The Land came with a rudimentary house, mature trees that plied us...

Back to The Land

Laia Jufresa

7 min

Spain

The first thing that hit me when I entered, I mean my first impression, was of walking into a place that was extremely strange and humid and dark, not just because of the closed doors and...

Just a Few Millimeters

Sara Mesa

24 min

Israel

Gila was a lovely girl, a little plump, and when she laughed she’d laugh to tears, while Hansie was a lovely and slender girl whose smile was also slender. They would both shine on dance nights,...

Gila

S. Yizhar

13 min

Israel

The stuff remakers of dreams are made of Joel would always cherish the day he met Morris Sadovski. Sitting in a living room whose walls were covered to the brim with colorful oil paintings, Morris looked...

Beit Hakerem. Jerusalem, 1985

Nir Baram

21 min

The Sad and Ambitious Girls of the Province

Israel

Bella loved it, to drive through the sleepy burnt out city, nothing but a few lit windows; and outside the darkness, thin and tangible. This time she was completely guilt free, despite leaving her two babies...

The Sad and Ambitious Girls of the Province

Nurit Zarchi

18 min

Denmark

It was the night Dirch Passer the comedian died. He collapsed onstage. His heart was sick and he was taken away by ambulance to the hospital, where they said he was dead on arrival. It was...

The Winter Garden

Dorthe Nors

4 min

USA

As the train rocked dead at Livingston he saw the man, in a worn khaki shirt with button flaps buttoned, arms crossed. The boy’s hand sprang up by reflex, and his face broke into a smile....

Walking Out

David Quammen

44 min

Canada

After collecting the beer bottles from the bunkhouses at the sawmill, the brothers headed into the forest behind their house to eat wild blackberries, until their bellies were rotten with them and their fingertips were stained...

The Spider in the Jar

Théodora Armstrong

5 min

India

The old Cool Water Well is said never to dry up, but it is now sealed, and serves only as a traffic roundabout. The streets around the well house contain a number of middle-class housing colonies....

The Cool Water Well Junction

Aravind Adiga

14 min

USA

She sat on a chair her hair cut short revealing her narrow neck. I wanted to cry and I wasn’t quite sure why exactly, that’s not true, I knew why. She gave me that intrusive thought that...

The Parts Where Your Pee Comes From

Emily Brout

6 min

Russia

Trees cannot talk and they stand as if riveted to the spot, but they are alive nonetheless. They’re breathing. They keep growing for as long as they live. Even enormous old-man trees – they grow a...

Two Brothers

Evgeny Schwartz

23 min

Israel

We arranged to meet at the Bagration Underground station and walk to Gorbushka to see a Siberian punk band. Gromov explained how I would recognize him: “I wear glasses, the bridge is held together by wire....

Dance of the Swans

Alice Bialsky

11 min

UK

Going to the shore on the first morning of the vacation, the young English boy stopped at a turning of the path and looked down at a wild and rocky bay, and then over the crowded...

Through the Tunnel

Doris Lessing

15 min

Taiwan

“Business savvy just doesn’t run in the blood,” my mum often says – in which there lies a veiled criticism of me, and a hint of regret. But no such regret existed until after I turned...

The Magician on the Footbridge

Wu Ming-Yi

22 min

Israel

Bitterness is a disease of old age; I aged early and by the time I was thirty six it had metastasized through every part of me. I loathed my past as much as I feared the...

The Kid

Rave Sagie

5 min