I came to the form of the short story late. But once I did, I stayed. Initially, it was a matter of practicalities. In my first year of college, I wanted to discover Chekhov. I wanted to find out what all the hype was about, not just because he’s known for shaping the form, but
Woof, Woof, Dear Lord by Sotiris Domitriou (trans. Leo Marshall). Kedros, 1995. Something Will Happen, You’ll See by Christos Ikonomou (trans. Karen Emmerich). Archepelago Books, 2016. Good Friday Vigil by Yorgos Ioannou (trans. Patrick Mackridge and Jackie Wilcox). Kedros, 1995. I’d Like by Amanda Michalopoulou (trans. Karen Emmerich). Dalkey Archive Press, 2008. On My Aunt’s
The contemporary Arabic short story lives in the literary shadows. For hundreds of years, poetry was the most glamorous literary genre in Arabic. Although the erudite composed and compiled many prose works in Arabic, including works we would recognize now as short stories, poetry was the genre where an author earned the widest admiration. This
Oasis Iniya dragged herself to the motel’s front desk, but no one was there to check her out. She poured some free coffee—it was decent for a hotel brew—and waited, before deciding to leave the key cards on the counter. The rest of the gang would be testy, she knew. They had been waiting for
Born in northern Bangladesh in 1968, Mashiul Alam is a Bangladeshi writer, journalist, and translator. He graduated from the People’s Friendship University in Moscow in 1993. A journalist by profession, he is the Senior Assistant Editor at Prothom Alo, a leading Bengali daily paper in Bangladesh. He is the author of over a dozen short story collections
I, Lilli Man They call me Lilli Man. They call me other names, too. Lilli Butcher, for example. Ever since I’ve started the farm, they’ve begun baptizing me “Lilliputian.” One muggy afternoon in August, sitting on the veranda, I am sulking about it. A female Lilliputian, who I call Li, is lounging in my lap.
Indimenticabile Mr Sundram doesn’t know that Lucia watches him feed the birds every morning. Mostly it’s the sparrows and the mynah birds that crowd his porch, but once in a while there’s a crow or a couple of doves. Lucia can tell Mr Sundram likes the doves best, the way he livens up when he
Culture Shocks In the fall of 1991, at the end of my first week of high school in America, I saw a picture of Allah. It was the year a highly intelligent Milwaukee man was luring young men to his home from the clubs and bars he met them, then killing them and storing their
Heaven Anyone who accidentally touches Alef’s hands says they are feminine, making the boys in the madrasa—who have never touched the hands of any woman, except for their mothers or sisters—curious. The boys invite Alef to play a game with them—led by seventeen-year-old Qaf, who wants to be the first to touch Alef’s hands. Alef
The Home Front Home was the first word that Hadassah learned that she came to realize had a much different meaning for other people than it did for her. There would be others—love, for instance, or even friendship—but even at an early age she was aware that this idea of home had both a broader
Shark In the room, Bo’s curled up and snoring. I try to imagine his former self: a rodeo star, all those girls crawling through windows to try to get to him like he told me. He’d been my first, and we dated off and on in high school—we were touch and go during his rodeo
