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I Only Blast Under Written Orders - story

Alexander Kluge

Sergeant Guy Bohn was a lawyer in civilian life. In the winter of 1939 he had been transferred from active front line service as a soldier of France near the Luxembourg border because of a…

El Verdugo - story

Honoré de Balzac

To Martinez de la Rosa. The clock of the little town of Menda had just struck midnight. At that moment a young French officer, leaning on the parapet of a long terrace which bordered the…

Séance with the Stasi - story

Sarah Khan

She was the lady in your neighborhood. You saw her at the supermarket, you saw her in line at the post office. She was like Monday, the day she brought her kid to school, Tuesday,…

My Istanbul - story

Emine Sevgi Özdamar

A Turkish philosopher from Istanbul once visited me in Berlin. He was only there for a few days. He looked at the street and said quietly, ‘I don’t think I could live here.’ Not the…

Envy, like all our feelings, had been dulled and weakened by hunger. We lacked the strength to experience emotions, to seek easier work, to walk, to ask, to beg… We envied only our acquaintances, the…

Nora, daughter of Marcus Beag - story

Pádraic Ó Conaire

I You never saw such surprise as that of the people of Ros Dha Loch when they heard that Nora, daughter of Marcus Beag, was to go to England. A sister of hers was already…

The Need to Be a Son - story

Andrea Jeftanovic

How could I serve myself from such distant plates, when the home had broken, when not even mother could be forced from the lips. How could I dine on nothing. César Vallejo I was born…

The Polish Boxer - story

Eduardo Halfon

69752. That he had it tattooed there, on his left forearm, so he wouldn’t forget it. That’s what my grandfather told me. And that’s what I grew up believing. In the 1970s, telephone numbers in…

Death of the Pugilist (Or, the famous battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw) - story

Daniel Mason

Who was Burke? His beginnings. Born a caulbearer in the Bristol slums, in the quayside heap known only as “the Rat,” Jacob Burke, who would battle the great McGraw on that fateful day in 1824,…

Drummer for the Czar - story

Arno Schmidt

I’ve never had any grand experiences myself – which doesn’t bother me at all by the way; I’m not fool enough to envy some world-traveler, I’ve read too much in Seydlitz or the unabridged Brehm…