Stories

Articles in this section

• "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town" (1912), Steven Leacock’s humorous masterpiece

  13 September by Steven Leacock

  Steven Leacock (1869-1944), a distinguished university professor [1], was and no doubt remains the most-read and most-loved Canadian humorist, and this famous set of tales about life in a typical town in central Ontario in the early 20th century remains as charming, as chuckingly amusing and as (...)

• "A Hunger Artist" (1922) by Franz Kafka

  10 September by Franz Kafka

  Written in 1922 and published as the title story in the first collection of his stories to be published after his death two years later at the age of forty, this account of a man’s determined and obsessive drive to surpass himself in the art of fasting explores the theme of eating in a calmly (...)

• "Don Juan", by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1813)

  5 August by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  A traveling salesman discovers that his hotel room leads directly to a private lodge in the neighbouring theatre, where a performance of Mozart’s opera “Don Juan” is about to be given. Delighted, the music lover rushes over to the lodge, where not only is the performance exceptional, but where he (...)

• "The Golden Pot" (1814) by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  12 July by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  An extravagant fairy-tale for grown-ups, the story of how the student Anselmus blundered his way to eternal happiness through a maze of mysterious not to say magical water-snakes, elder-trees, a golden pot and fantastic events of all sorts — one of the celebrated master of German Romanticism E. (...)

• "Little Zaches, called Zinnober" (1819) by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  9 July by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Little Zaches is a very small, misshapen, evil-tempered, utterly selfish and vainglorious little boy who’s a complete burden to his poverty-stricken mother, until one day the kindly Fräulein von Rosenschön — actually the Fairy Rosabelverde in the shape of the mistress of a convent — takes pity on (...)