The narrator, who’s sojourning in Algeria and suffering heavily from the heat and the absence of female companionship, writes to a friend who wants to know what the ladies are like in those parts.
The letter is an account of his steamy affair with the (very) passionate wife of a citizen in the town on the coast where he he’d rented a house.
Marroca was first published in the daily newspaper Gil Blas on March 2, 1882 under the pen-name Maufrigneuse, and then in the anthology Mademoiselle (…)
Most recent articles
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"Marroca" - Maupassant’s torrid account of love under the African sun (1882)
9 April, by Guy de Maupassant -
"Volodya" by Anton Chekhov (1887)
5 April, by Anton ChekhovVolodya is a frail seventeen-year-old student thinking about the critical exam the following day that could result in his expulsion from school, about his inferior social position at the house of the Shumihins where he and his mother are guests, and about the attractiveness of the Shumihins’ thirty-year-old married cousin. This is the account of the quite catastrophic results (for Volodya) of that encounter.
Volodya) (Russian title: Володя) was first published in the daily newspaper (…) -
"The Examining Magistrate" by Anton Chekhov (1887)
3 April, by Anton ChekhovAn examining magistrate tells a doctor while they are driving to an inquest that “there is a great deal that is enigmatic and obscure in nature; and even in everyday life one must often come upon phenomena which are absolutely incapable of explanation.” When the skeptical doctor declares that there’s no effect without a cause and that if there’s a death there must be a reason for it, the magistrate proceeds to tell him of a woman who had for months predicted the exact date upon which she (…)
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"An Adventure (a driver’s story)" by Anton Chekhov (1887)
1 April, by Anton ChekhovA cab-driver tells a passenger the story of how his father had fallen victim to robbers after bragging in a café that he was taking five hundred roubles of rent-money to town. He’d been accosted by thieves afterwards, but not before confiding the money to his little daughter, who’d fled through the surrounding woods. She lost her way though, and finally came to a cabin where a woman gave her shelter; but unfortunately it was the home of the chief of the robbers and the woman gave them the (…)
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"The Tenant" by Anton Chekhov (1886)
30 March, by Anton ChekhovBrykovich rushes out of his flat late at night fed up with the bossiness of his wife, the owner of the lodging house where they live. He encounters the musician Khalyavkin, who’s behind with his rent and is unsuccessfully trying to get his key into his lock after a night out with fellow artists, and starts berating him for being in arrears. An argument begins that evolves into a very Russian discussion involving life’s troubles, sausages, tea and vodka that lasts until dawn and is the start (…)
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"Women Make Trouble" by Anton Chekhov (1886)
28 March, by Anton ChekhovThe magistrate Popikov is woken up early by Ivan, an unkempt peasant who’d been summoned to appear before him at 11 a.m. to testify in an affair of assault. The judge decides to hear him anyway, and the man in his confused and semi-illiterate manner recounts the affair that had started when he’d pulled a boy’s ears for throwing stones at ducks in a pond, much to the violent disapproval of the accused man, a certain (inebriated) Drykhunov who was passing by and who’d ended up by inviting Ivan (…)
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"The Wolf" by Anton Chekhov (1886)
26 March, by Anton ChekhovNilov is a big, very powerful man who was attacked by a probably-rabid wolf when out for a walk at night while staying with a friend during a hunting expedition.
Nilov manages to survive, but his subsequent anguish at the thought of having contacted rabies and his desperate efforts to find a cure for the dreaded disease constitute the meat of this short but rather powerful story of a mortal conflict between man and beast and its consequences.
Initially published in the daily newspaper (…) -
"Mari d’elle" by Anton Chekhov (1885)
24 March, by Anton ChekhovAn opera singer unsuccessfully confronts her parasitical husband who has been profiting from her fame and wealth ever since she defied him to take up her artistic career.
A resounding declaration in favour of feminine emancipation, only marred somewhat by the basic vileness of the male partner in this fruitless and endless confrontation.
The title “Mari d’elle” is a direct tranposition of the original Russian title in the Latin alphabet, signifying “Her Husband”.
It was first published (…) -
"Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
11 November 2025, by Miguel de CervantesThis masterpiece will never cease to impress and to awe. Published in 1605, long before anything of similar stature was produced elsewhere in Europe [1], this rollicking tale of a man driven to the edge of folly by his passion for books (readers, beware!) and his immersion in the dream-world they project (video gamers, beware!) to go out into the wild world out there to combat its injustices (social reformers, beware!) and win the heart of his idealised Dulcina (lovers, beware!) is a (…)
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"Memoirs of Captain Alonso de Contreras" (ca. 1640)
25 October 2025, by Alonso de ContrerasThe spectacular memoir [1] of a Spanish soldier in the heyday of Spanish might in the early 17th century, describing his adventurous and excessively violent career as a soldier, sailor and officer of the Order of Malta from the time he left home in 1595 at the age of 13 – with the first of a great many killings already behind him – until the memoir comes to an end almost 30 years later.
This fascinating memoir, that historical research has shown to be scrupulously exact in all its military (…)