Stories

Articles in this section

• "Lalie’s Story", from Zola’s novel "L’Assommoir" (1877)

  8 May 2020 by Emile Zola

  Lalie is an eight-year-old girl living in the room next to Gervaise, the central character of Emile Zola’s novel "L’Assommoir" about life in a working-class district of Paris in the 1850s and 60s.
  She is one of the most unforgettable characters in that masterwork, although she only appears in (...)

• "War" (1918): Luigi Pirandello’s memorable story about parenthood in wartime

  1 March 2020 by Luigi Pirandello

  Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was celebrated in his native Italy as a short-story writer before he achieved international acclaim towards the end of his career for ground-breaking modern plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Henry IV (1922) and Tonight We Improvise (1930). (...)

• "The Promenade (der Spaziergang)" (1917) by Robert Walser

  15 August 2019 by Robert Walser

  Robert Walser (1878-1956) was a Swiss-German poet and author of novels, short stories and essays who is remembered particularly for his delicate and yet somehow powerful poems [1] and this quite wonderful monologue about his encounters and observations and thoughts during a pleasant stroll on a (...)

• "The Bottle Imp" (1891) - a South Sea fable by Robert Louis Stevenson

  11 May 2019 by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), author of the immortal Treasure Island (1883) and other notable works such as Travels with a Donkey (1879), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), was born and educated in Scotland and remained deeply attached to his (...)

• A selection of Nelson Algren’s best short stories

  21 July 2018 by Nelson Algren

  Nelson Algren (1909-1981), author notably of the novels Never Come Morning (1942), The Man With the Golden Arm (1949) and A Walk On the Wild Side (1956), of the essay Chicago, City on the Make (1951) and of the short-story anthology The Neon Wilderness (1947), had a special talent for the (...)