Stories

Articles in this section

• "The Marble Statue" (1819) by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

  1 November by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

  Florio is a young poet traveling through Italy who on coming to the ancient town of Lucca meets in rapid succession a boisterous fellow poet and singer, a beautiful young Greek maiden, a strange cavalier and a mysterious and somewhat evanescent lady who bears a strange resemblance to a lovely (...)

• "A Country Doctor" (1918) by Franz Kafka

  23 September by Franz Kafka

  An elderly country doctor is called at night to come to the bedside of a suffering young man ten miles away, but the mission is surrounded by difficulties from the start: there’s a snowstorm raging outside and his only horse has just died from over-exertion in the freezing winter. But although (...)

• "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town" (1912), Steven Leacock’s humorous masterpiece

  13 September by Steven Leacock

  Steven Leacock (1869-1944), a distinguished university professor [1] brought up on a farm in central Ontario, Canada, was and no doubt remains the most-read and most-loved Canadian humorist, and this famous set of tales about life in a typical town in those there parts in the early part of the (...)

• "A Hunger Artist" (1922) by Franz Kafka

  10 September by Franz Kafka

  Written in 1922 and published as the title story in the first collection of his stories to be published after his death two years later at the age of forty, this account of a man’s determined and obsessive drive to surpass himself in the art of fasting explores the theme of eating in a calmly (...)

• "Don Juan" (1813), by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  5 August by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  A traveling salesman discovers that his hotel room leads directly to a private lodge in the neighbouring theatre, where a performance of Mozart’s opera “Don Juan” is about to be given. Delighted, the music lover rushes over to the lodge, where not only is the performance exceptional, but where he (...)