Fiction

Zuska Kepplová

We each have a role. I am the storyteller. She is the muse. She’s Romanian. She looks like a Gypsy. A beautiful Gypsy. She says that if it gave her more cachet in the academic world, she’d gladly say she’s a Gypsy.

Zuska Kepplová

We each have a role. I am the storyteller. She is the muse. She’s Romanian. She looks like a Gypsy. A beautiful Gypsy. She says that if it gave her more cachet in the academic world, she’d gladly say she’s a Gypsy.

Gustáv Reuss

Everything seemed set for the trip to the Moon when the prudent Krutohlav, still lost in contemplation of the whole enterprise, imagined yet more problems that stood in his way.

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Uma Jagwani

Jane always drove a little drunk. She was a really good drunk driver and insisted she’s even better at driving when a little drunk. I wasn’t worried — she’s never been caught or close to an accident. But tonight she was off.

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Benjamin K. Herrington

I asked her if it was strange that sometimes he’d rub and stroke my almost sunburned unshirted shoulders, tousle my hair, offer me a drag off his smoke, and then tell me a dirty joke, or a story about eating pussy. I asked her if this was something that should concern me.

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Tim Goldstone

An elderly ex colonel walking stiffly past me in the opposite direction takes the time to come carefully to a halt and explain to me how hundreds of years ago the villagers here destroyed the fish trap a landowner had built upriver to stop their supply of free fish.

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Nathaniel Eddy

Let’s pretend it wasn’t fleeing but instead the curiosity of a flame. A month in Mexico, the details lost but for a few memories, mementos. The copper bowl, purchased from a woman kneeling by the side of a road. A milky looking scar, thread thin, drawn into the muscle of your shoulder.

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Sándor Jászberényi

I was born a feral beast.

At the time of my birth, I tore my mother apart. It wasn’t on purpose. I think the circumstances caused it. There was a lot of blood in the hospital room.

My father, who gutted animals as part of his occupation, couldn’t bear to look.

He needed two dark beers and two shots of liquor to quiet the horror inside him.

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Gaurav Monga

This Radha, unlike the one I spend most of my waking life with, drives a car with impeccable accuracy, almost as if she has eyes at the back of her head. This Radha, though cold and calculating, has been having sex with many men behind my back. 

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Krisztina Tóth

The screaming could be heard in the outside corridor, someone had moved house out of me, never to return.

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J.W.Goll

J.W.Goll

When Jack Mendenhall returns from Vietnam, Wendy thinks she is interested. She likes tough boys with swagger, dirty mouths, and nasty imaginations.

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Leonie Hodkevitch

We drove through the dark landscape. We wanted to get there before darkness fell, but dusk was already spreading over the area—earlier here than elsewhere.

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Ken Nash

The benefits of stone skipping have already made a profound effect on my writing. I’ve been able to challenge myself and grow as a writer in ways that I had not been able to before I took up stone skipping.

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Ludovic Bruckstein

And lifting his eyes from the book, he saw on the threshold of the open door the tall thin figure of the wayfarer with the tangled white beard, the clear blue eyes sunken in their sockets, the long weather-beaten bluish caftan.

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Jānis Joņevs

How nice it was not knowing anything, except that what you were doing was important. To know that your daily actions contained some kind of hidden power. They believed that their work would contribute to the unified, inescapable, and impending victory.

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Bianca Bellová. Photo by Jan Trnka

Bianca Bellová

My body is a shallow mound, is how her most famous poem began. She had written it when she was the same age as the young man who was sitting opposite her now, wanting to interview her.

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Gaurav Monga

Christian Dior, in his Little Dictionary of Fashion maintains that “if you have a particularly outstanding feature it is always a good thing to emphasise it. In fact the whole of fashion rests largely on emphasis.”

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Marijana Čanak

The teacher swung his arm to strike her once more, but it remained in mid-air, as if petrified. A blue children’s watch was engraved on his skin. And with every tick the clasp sank deeper into his flesh. They could not get it off without cutting.

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Lukáš Cabala

It contained the body of a roughly four-year-old boy. That in itself is astounding, since we’re talking about a time frame of about twenty-four thousand years ago …

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Daša Drndić

I discovered a lot of secrets, a lot of combinations, dark, political, religious, ideological, personal, to do with chess; spying, double and triple secret agents from all camps, secret police involved in dirty activities.

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Duncan Robertson

One of those things most difficult to convey about the special conditions in which we lived was the visegradišag: that everything, buying bread, recycling, riding the tram, came with a surreal associated cost that was impossible to anticipate …

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Elena Alexieva

For a moment, she wondered where all dead birds go when they die, which probably happens every minute of every hour, so really, birds should be falling from the sky not just from time to time, but raining down constantly …

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Marek Šindelka

A girl boarded the train. Actually, she was no longer a girl, because she was about thirty. But there was something in her behaviour and her appearance which suggested that, body aside, she was still a girl.

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Vratislav Kadlec

Vratislav Kadlec’s short story collection Hranice lesa (The Forest Boundary), from which this piece was taken, received the Magnesia Litera Award.

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Paweł Sołtys

Paweł Sołtys is a Polish writer as well as a musician, singer and songwriter also known under his stage name, Pablopavo.

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Zach Murphy

Zach Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His debut chapbook of flash fiction is Tiny Universes.

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Lucy Tunstall

THIRD MARRIAGE I was not invited to my father’s third marriage, but they saved me some cake, and the bride’s aunt gave me a knitted

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Genta Nishku

THREE IN THE AFTERNOON I told him to meet me at three in the afternoon, a good and sensible hour. When he finally arrived, it

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Petra Hůlová | Photo by Martin Rýz

Petra Hůlová

THE MOVEMENT Today is the first Wednesday of the month, open-door day. I show the visitors around—women, married couples, and men (more and more older

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Sarah Rose Haughn

COMPANION SPECIES Every day down the same road toward Jinja Town the dog rides next to the aid worker in the company Land Rover. Sometimes

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Robin Vigfusson

UTBURDUR Carol’s husband, Charlie, had pneumonia, but still insisted they go out and rake leaves. Charlie had always been mulish, but in old age, it

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Mitja Čander

BLIND MAN (an excerpt) Thanks to the automatic system of the old days, I had been registered as a member of the Association of the

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Natalie Warther

MOTH I was reborn as a moth and knew instantly that I didn’t have much time. You don’t think you’ll feel the lifespan, but you

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Andrey Filimonov

WORLD CREATION RECIPES   From Paris to Siberia, across the whole 20th century (an excerpt) 1. I want to talk about the young lady in

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Julia Kissina

When the dogs had finished their business, they were, for quite some time afterward, unable to disentangle, and the Abbot asked us not to disturb them.

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Pavol Rankov

In the evenings Karcsi sat quietly at the table and watched his mother pray. Her lips moved silently through the rosary, and he looked as if he were trying to figure out which part of the prayer she was saying.

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Julia Lukshina

Life is so afflicted by clarity and definition these days that the sensations of mystery and beauty I associated with the mist are even more precious to me.

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Pratiwi Juliani

THE OLD MAN AND THE CAT There’s a square on the edge of a busy town. People go there in the late afternoon to sit

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Elena Dolgopyat

SCIENCE   Picture the screen of a black and white television glowing in the corner of a dark room. A man’s face in close up.

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Bijan Najdi

MY BUTTON EYES   I have a big head. My face is flat and doesn’t have cheeks. I have button eyes. I cannot stand on

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Pavla Horáková

  UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION   Under the grey sky, a grey village. Everything is grey: dirty snow in an empty yard, the walls of

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Dušan Mitana

Signs   (an excerpt)   On August 29th, 1646, 120 years after the Battle of Mohács, peasant Juraj Mitana was born, and on the same

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Richard Pupala

  A LION IN THE FOREST   A forest of beech trees in late April is as neat and tidy as a newly unwrapped present. Fresh tufts

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Zoran Ferić

LEGEND   1. During a group therapy session for the emotionally disturbed he said that every spring, when the swallows return from the south, he

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Anna Bolavá

  SETTING FREE   I’m sitting in a gutted armchair in the middle of our dimly lit front hall, biding time. When I’m still, I

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Ádám Bodor

  REBI   I am still half-asleep in the early hours when I hear sirens approaching the farm and it occurs to me that it’s

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Dusan Sarotar

BILLIARDS AT THE HOTEL DOBRAY   (an excerpt) Billiards at the Hotel Dobray A novel by Dušan Šarotar Translated from the Slovene by Rawley Grau

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Dorota Maslowska

HONEY, I KILLED THE CATS   (an excerpt) Honey, I Killed The Cats A novel by Dorota Masłowska Translated from the Polish by Benjamin Paloff

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Stefan Bošković

  FASHION AND FRIENDS   The two of you stand in front of the fitting room, he has a pair of trousers in each hand

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Julia Butschkow

NEW YEAR’S DAY   I’ve never spent a New Year’s Eve like this before. Without going out. Just lying under the comforter without having the

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Jose Silva

MY GRANDFATHER’S MEMORY   My grandfather invented a famous memory. It was the result of long years of hard struggle and more than a little

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Olja Savicevic

  SINGER IN THE NIGHT   (an excerpt)     Singer in the Night A novel by Olja Savičević Translated from the Croatian by Celia

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Biljana Jovanovic

  DOGS AND OTHERS   (An excerpt)   Dogs and Others A novel by Biljana Jovanović Translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox Published

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Daniel Majling

  Rushian Clashics   (an excerpt)   Introduction I first encountered Rushian clashics five years ago, at a time when much less was being written

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Eric Sentell

  CATECHISM   Samuel scanned the café, barely aware of its coffee aroma. His facial analysis software said everyone was full-bred white, straight, and gender

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Daša Drndić

DOPPELGÄNGER (an excerpt) Doppelgänger A novel by Daša Drndić Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth and Susan Curtis Published by Istros Books It is

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Natalie Bergman

  THE BLUE CIRCLE COLLECTOR   It was a Wednesday when a pot bellied mustached man with beady eyes walked into the Registry Office 3

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Willie Davis

  THE EGAN RABBIT   Meander Casey leaned against the side of The Egan Rabbit, a downtown warehouse converted into a space for small shows

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David Jan Zak

THE RETURN OF THE KING OF THE BOHEMIAN FOREST   (an excerpt)   CHARLES ECKERT stands by an open window in the office of the

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Pavel Vilikovsky

  FLEETING SNOW   (an excerpt)   Fleeting Snow A novel by Pavel Vilikovský Translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood Published by

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Aditya Desai

  TERMINUS   There was one day that Ashok was caught in a bind, the last time he had taken a train in India. He’d

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J. R. Pick

  SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS (an excerpt) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals A novel by J. R. Pick

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Eva Peterfy-Novak

  MOSCOW II.   Read part one of Moscow here   I’m sitting on the toilet staring at the pink bathroom. The reason it’s pink

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Edvin Subasic

  DJELEM DJELEM MALEM   Malem carried his axe door to door, cutting firewood every fall. They say he never parted from it, not even

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Pavol Rankov

  PLACES THAT ARE NOT ON THE MAP   (an excerpt)   The clock dial on a shelf above the table showed 8:30pm, but it

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Meg Pokrass

  SHOULDER BIRD   This new patient was an eccentric, there was no question. She was nuts, but in a pleasant way. Her nuttiness involved

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Daniel Levente Pal

  THE 8TH DISTRICT OF GOD   (excerpts)   The location is the outer 8th district of Budapest, which is called Józsefváros (Josephtown). This is

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Eva Peterfy-Novak

  MOSCOW I.   Read part two of Moscow here   “Do you know anything about her?” I ask the friend of my little sister

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Vilmos Csanyi

  THE SCENT OF PERFECTION   In which the Book is introduced to the reader, some sacred texts are discussed, and there begins the story

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Balla

  PAPER PLANES   The writer bought a literary magazine, leafed through it, and was gratified: he hadn’t submitted anything and none of his work had

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Walerian Domanski

  BANNER   As usual, John Gozdzik, manager of the bus station in Slonim, did not have too much to do in his office around

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Petra Hůlová

  THREE PLASTIC ROOMS   (an excerpt)   Three Plastic Rooms A novel by Petra Hůlová Translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker Published by

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Suvi Mahonen

  COMING HOME   05:05 am. My eyes open. A faint pearly blade of light squeezing past the blind. The distant metallic scrape of a

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Agnieszka Dale

  FOX SEASON   Fox Season and Other Short Stories Short Stories by Agnieszka Dale Published by Jantar Publishing   Permission to Bow Like all

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Brano Mandic

  FEBO WAITED FOR A PENCIL   Febo could not have realized the truth that accompanied his words or that went out before them like

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A.M. Bakalar

  CHILDREN OF OUR AGE   (an excerpt)     Children of Our Age A novel by A.M. Bakalar Published by Jantar Publishing   There

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L.S. McKee

  LULLWATER   (an excerpt)                 … the soft aired, Tennessee night            

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Filip David

  THE HOUSE OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING   (an excerpt)   The House of Remembering and Forgetting A novel by Filip David Translated from the

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Dana Todorovic

  THE TRAGIC FATE OF MORITZ TOTH   (an excerpt)   The Tragic Fate of Moritz Toth A novel by Dana Todorović Translated from the

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Mirjana Novakovic

    FEAR AND HIS SERVANT   Fear and his Servant A novel by Mirjana Novaković Translated from the Serbian by Terence McEneny Published by

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Aleksei Lukyanov

Ever read The Lord of the Rings? I knew it! You look like a reader, you have that kind of face. … So alright, then, listen to my story all the way through, and you’ll catch on. You’ll understand that I couldn’t have done any different.

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Ken Nash

  THE GOOD COUPLE   We are aware the ugly sounds coming from us may be overheard by the good couple next door. There is

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Thomay Worton

  MOMI   Momi was born such an extraordinary beauty that, upon her delivery, the doctor grappled her tightly in his arms and ran around

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Korana Serdarevic

  BIRDCAGE   This evening, too, she goes out onto the small balcony and watches the shared yard. One step through the glass door, and

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Spomenka Stimec

CROATIAN WAR NOCTURNAL   (an excerpt) Croatian War Nocturnal A novel by Spomenka Štimec Translated from the Esperanto by Sebastian Schulman Published by Phoneme Media

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James Hopkin

  HIPSTERS AT AN EXHIBITION   “If we all had our middle fingers removed, would there be anything left to say?” It is the vernissage

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Robin Wyatt Dunn

  LISTENING AT THE EDGES   1. I hid in the church after they left. Some of the stained glass had been broken, and the

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Ales Steger

  ABSOLUTION   (an excerpt)   Absolution A novel by Aleš Šteger Translated from the Slovene by Urška Charney and Noah Charney Published by Istros

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Ondrej Stefanik

  MY NAME IS PAULA   (an excerpt)   She picked out photos from albums and peeled them off their pages. She spread them out

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Dušan Mitana

I’m ashamed to admit I had acted under the pressure of circumstance, and the whole thing happened purely by chance. I’d much prefer to think it had all been predestined a long time ago, because inevitability is a great excuse for actions even more cruel than those I’m about to describe.

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Giuseppe Taurino

  AS CLOSE AS WE’LL EVER GET   The Razi family over the Atlantic: we fill the middle section of a ten-seat row somewhere along

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Tea Tulic

  HAIR EVERYWHERE   (an excerpt)   Hair Everywhere A novel by Tea Tulić Translated from the Croatian by Coral Petkovich Published by Istros Books

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Israel Centeno

  THE CONSPIRACY (excerpt)   The Conspiracy A novel by Israel Centeno Translated from the Spanish by Guillermo Parra Published by Phoneme Media    

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Ricarda Huch

  THE LAST SUMMER The Last Summer A novel by Ricarda Huch Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch Published by Peirene Press    

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Uzi Weil

  ISRAEL, 2014 The woman all this happened to, whose name is – let’s say – Dahlia, is thirty-two. She has a five year old

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Ilija Durovic

  PARTS OF TOWN   “Put the leash on me so I can take you out for a bit,” Hans told me. Hans is a

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Daniil Kharms

  IVAN YAKOVLIVICH ANTONOV’S CAREER   This thing had happened still before the revolution. One merchant woman yawned, and a cuckoo bird flew into her

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Daniil Kharms

  FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS OF HOW A NEW CONCEPT ASTOUNDS A PERSON WHO ISN’T READY FOR IT   WRITER: I am a writer! READER: Аnd I

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