Presented here for the first time in English, the cult writer Charles Chahwan—"Lebanon's answer to Charles Bukowski"—tells a tale of rival militiamen euphoric with violence.   Under the gentle afternoon sunlight, Serge’s body appeared limp and more slouched than usual as he rested against the back seat of the shared taxi, a Morris Princess. He was the sole passenger in the service as it made its way down the coastal highway, as if other potential...

After learning that he is officially dead, Brazilian writer J. P. Cuenca tries to understand who stole his identity and why. A dead man’s greatest virtue is honesty. —Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas   I found out I was dead when I started to write a book. It wasn’t this book yet. I was living with my wife in an apartment two floors above a restaurant. The kitchen staff would get together on the restaurant’s back...

A game of checkers has life-and-death consequences in this short story by Ada Rémy and Yves Rémy. General Arthur Shine-Levis tells his friends he fought eight battles during the campaign of Winter ’44 to Spring ’45. Eight times over, he emerged victorious. “Because I’m a solid checkers player,” he adds. He is entreated to explain himself. He obliges. “It was the eve of my first battle. A quiet night. Not a whisper in camp, just the...

In this short story by Daryll Delgado, a devastating typhoon unearths an unexpected childhood memory. ­Masasarop an baha, pero diri an baba. The flood may be contained, but never the mouth. —Waray proverb   “. . . it was pointless to search in the places where people were instructed to look. Sense was only to be found in secrets.” —John Berger, Here Is Where We Meet: A Story of Crossing Paths    “Less than 12 hours from a devastating...

In this short story by Robert Marcuse, a man attempts to rid himself of his own shadow. When a man looks at his shadow, it’s because he’s thinking about something else: he looks at it without seeing it, lost in thought, and his gaze barely touches it. We’ve lived with our shadows so long that they no longer attract our attention. They’re withdrawn and rather mysterious beings often hiding just behind us, or they peek out from the soles of our shoes. They...

A homicide investigation takes an uncanny turn in this short story by Luiz Carlos Lisboa. Listen to Luiz Carlos Lisboa read "His Very Last Case" in the original Portuguese. "Walt! Walt! Walter!" Janice repeated in an increasingly strained voice, running her fingers through the white hair of the man lying on the bed. Standing behind him, the maid and a male nurse watched the scene unfold, not moving. Somewhere in the neighborhood a car horn had begun sounding and took several minutes...

Karaoke unites a group of Filipina expats in this short story by Genevieve Asenjo. She arrived as a guest and departed as an accomplice to a crime, after sitting down to a dinner of pinakbet and sinigang with the Kim family. At least, that’s what she tells me in between mouthfuls of peanuts and potato chips. We are at Janga Norebang in Koejong. Listen. One night in this Korean family’s typical apartment in Busan, tap water was gushing from the faucet onto the sink. There...

In a group of tales by Tito Valiente drawing on a Filipino storytelling tradition, a supernatural beast seduces a young woman.   Editor’s Note: A Sugilanon is a form of story told orally. The power of the Sugilanon or tale depends on the skill and charisma of the narrator as he weaves the details of the story. Erlina's Sugilanon Begins Erlina was the all-around maid in my maternal grandmother's home. We did not have a wet nurse because by the time she arrived in...

In this short story by Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano, a young girl longs to see the world beyond her rural village. Darkness falls in the afternoon. It’s going to rain again. The carabao and the goats have been herded off to shelter. The newly harvested corn has been covered. The house smells of fuel because our tiny lamp has been lit. Smoke rises from the hearth, a signal that Mama is cooking something. The five of us can’t go out. I want to go out so I can wait for...

Translated by Noor Zaheer, this folktale of treachery and thwarted romance—from the Kunju Pass Area in Lahoul, eastern Himachal Pradesh—explores the question of whether love can survive after death.   Outside a cave, three men crouched around a fire on that fateful night. Winter is severe in the upper Himalayas, but nowhere is it as harsh as when you have crossed the Great Himalayan ranges and reached Lahoul. Dotted with fields of potatoes and maize in the summer, when...

In this short story by Najwa bin Shatwan, a Daesh attack forces George to flee the Christian cemetery and take refuge among the Muslim dead of Benghazi. It was customary for the dead of Benghazi to visit their families whenever they pleased, sticking their noses into every affair—big or small—and, if a revolution were to break out, they would join its ranks, having no qualms about dying twice over. Such was, without fail, the habit of all the dead in Benghazi: those whose...

A young woman finds love where she least expects it in this folktale from the Kinnaur Valley, translated by Noor Zaheer.   This story was narrated by an old man of the village to a group of young people to make them understand that all living beings are inherently equal. “On the way to Rekong Peo, if you take a diversion off the road onto the goat path and climb uphill for about five miles, you arrive at an unexpected expanse of blue. Still, clear, shining: this...

A side hustle among a group of quarry laborers balloons into a bureaucracy of shocking proportions in this short story by Muhammad Mustajab. Whatever else the case, we wish ill on no man, not even those who give us orders, and I would like to begin here by saluting, enthusiastically, any person who is given the chance to do good and takes it. Good being, in its fullest sense, much like these far-flung red wastes studded with rocks and stones and camel thorn, in drifts of which lie...

Tradition and modernity clash in this folktale from the Spiti region of the Himalayas, translated by Noor Zaheer.   There is a village named Tabo in the Spiti region of the Himalayas. The village is shaped like a cup, a huge tract of flat land surrounded by high, rocky mountains. The Spiti river cuts this cup-shaped land in half, gushing and rushing for a couple of miles before slowing down to the leisurely gait of a pregnant woman as it reaches the flatlands. The Tabo monastery,...

Despite her family’s disapproval, a young woman pursues her career ambitions and resists monogamy in this piece by Sahar Mandour.   I was twenty-two and my husband, Yussef, was five years older than me. I always liked his first name but not his last, Bazaza, which made me Mrs. Bazaza. Me? Mrs. Bazaza? His house on the waterfront used to overlook the Raouche rock before someone stuck a building right in the middle of the view. He also had a ton of money before inflation turned...

In this extract from Monica Isakstuen's novel, a wife and mother of three struggles to contain her fury. The story of us, how did it go again. You say: Why do you think I left work so early that day, why do you think I felt such a sudden urge to read up on ginkgo trees and primeval forests, why do you think I got into my car and drove to the neighboring town when I could just as easily have borrowed what I needed from a library closer to home, why do you think I visited your library,...

Roskva Koritzinsky's short story portrays a young dancer's alienation in a Stockholm gripped by a lurid trial. At the age of nineteen, I went to Stockholm to attend the Ballet Academy. It was around that time when people had started doubting whether or not Sture Bergwall had really committed the murders he had been accused of. The TV reporters followed him from crime scene to crime scene. He went around in a daze, bug-eyed behind thick lenses and looking like a dying giant insect...

Jan Kristoffer Dale's short story follows a weekend trip derailed by an unexpected participant. They picked him up on Friday afternoon. Kenneth had thought it was only going to be Terje, Tor André, and him on the trip to the cabin in Kverve. But sitting down in the backseat, he saw that Tor André had brought along his workmate, Espen. He looked a few years younger than Kenneth and the others, and dressed differently too. Not to mention his posh, Eastern Norwegian way of...

On Christmas Eve, a bus driver transports a fragile passenger in Levi Henriksen's short story.   Listen to Levi Henriksen read "All the Way Home" in the original Norwegian.   I don’t know how she managed to get out, but suddenly she’s just standing there. Again I am struck by how well she has aged. Every time I look at myself in the mirror, my face looks like a photograph of drought-stricken flatlands in Africa, where the earth is full of cracks and nothing...

In this extract from Linn Strømsborg’s novel, a woman just out of graduate school moves back in with her parents and resumes her adolescence. Høybråtenveien 23 K It starts again, this feeling in the pit of my stomach, as soon as I’m alone in my old room at home: the feeling that time is standing still, that I’m the same as when I was eleven and fifteen and twenty-four. I lie on my bed, then get up and walk around a bit. I look out of the window...