The Penguin Book of the International Short Story

by Rabih Alameddine, John Freeman, Haruki Murakami

The best in short fiction from around the world, from celebrated anthologist and author John Freeman and award-winning novelist Rabih Alameddine

In The Penguin Book of the International Short Story, writers from different nations, languages, and sensibilities come together to create a globe-spanning and long overdue tour of modern fiction. In “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,” Haruki Murakami brings us a man who believes a giant toad is enlisting him to protect his city from an impending earthquake. In “War of Clowns,” Mozambique’s Mia Cuoto sketches a perfect allegory for our divided culture. In the predecessor story to her iconic novel The Vegetarian, Han Kang’s protagonist quietly undergoes an unlikely transformation. A Colm Tóibín character thinks, “I do not even believe in Ireland,” while Carol Bensimon reflects from Brazil, “All great ideas seem like bad ones at some point.” Salman Rushdie brings us to unsettled rural India, Olga Tokarczuk to an ugly woman exhibit at the circus, Abdallah Taia to the queer Arab world, Ted Chiang to a far-off galaxy.

As it turns out, America is far from the center of the literary universe. The anthology is reminiscent of iconic director Bong Joon Ho’s line about overcoming “the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” to enter a new world of film—through the work of thoughtful and accomplished translators, the writing gathered here opens the door wide for readers, writers, and educators curious for what lies beyond the Western canon and classroom. With writers from six continents, ranging from new voices to literary celebrities, each story is a window into a distinct point of view, transcending but illuminating its place of origin. They offer not only captivating prose but a reminder of the power of the imagination across space and time.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Cultural, Literary Fiction

448 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2026

About the author

Rabih Alameddine (Arabic: ربيع علم الدين; born 1959) is an American painter and writer. His 2021 novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California to pursue higher education. He earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Business in San Francisco.

Alameddine began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. His debut novel Koolaids, which touched on both the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and the Lebanese Civil War, was published in 1998 by Picador.

The author of six novels and a collection of short stories, Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. His queer sensibility has added a different slant to narratives about immigrants within the context of what became known as Orientalism.

In 2014, Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and he won the California Book Awards Gold Medal Fiction for An Unnecessary Woman.

Alameddine is best known for this novel, which tells the story of Aaliya, a Lebanese woman and translator living in war-torn Lebanon. The novel "manifests traumatic signposts of the [Lebanese] civil war, which make it indelibly situational, and accordingly latches onto complex psychological issues."

In 2017, Alameddine won the Arab American Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for The Angel of History.

In 2018 he was teaching in the University of Virginia's creative writing program, in Charlottesville.

He was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Short Story Award for his story, "The July War".

His novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Reviews

[emma]

welcome to my BECOMING A GENIUS project, part 31!

i first started this initiative (in which i read the collected short stories of different authors) in order to attain bragging rights and achieve peak intelligence, in that order. but i haven't stuck with it regularly in recent years, so it's time to bring out the big guns.

443 pages. 34 stories. 6 continents. just over a month.

let's do this.

read previous projects here


DAY ONE: SUPER-FROG SAVES TOKYO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI
i could not have imagined the horrors both averted and created by the titular super-frog.
rating: 3.5


DAY TWO: THE ILLUMINATION OF SANTIAGO BY NONA FERNANDEZ
this is that kind of good old-fashioned short story you can imagine reading in school. but actually enjoying.
rating: 4


DAY THREE: APPLES BY GUNNHILD OYEHAUG
this was just perfect — meta and emotional and beautiful and true. i'm blown away.
rating: 5


DAY FOUR: MY SAD DEAD BY MARIANA ENRIQUEZ
oh! i've read this one. now i feel like i'm a genius already.
rating: 4


DAY FIVE: WAR OF THE CLOWNS BY MIA COUTO
well, that was unbelievably dark.
rating: 3


DAY SIX: ONE MINUS ONE BY COLM TOIBIN
colm!!! i knew this too would be perfect.
rating: 5


DAY SEVEN: THE FLOWER GARDEN BY MIEKO KAWAKAMI
now mieko? this book is the gift that keeps on giving.

i related to this book a bit, because i was recently shown a perfect home by a person who didn't want to part with it, but then it departed from my experience.
rating: 4


DAY EIGHT: NIGHT WOMEN BY EDWIDGE DANTICAT
the topic i expected. but more about sleeping children than i would have thought.
rating: 3.5


DAY NINE: THE JULY WAR
male coming of age stories are uniformly terrifying.
rating: 3.5


DAY TEN: CATTLE PRAISE SONG BY SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA
it's not really about the cows.
rating: 4


DAY ELEVEN: GARMENTS BY TAHMIMA ANAM
another quiet and heartbreaking and hopeful story. this penguin sure knows how to pick them.
rating: 4.5


DAY TWELVE: ROTTEN STENCH BY EKA KURNIAWAN
one long, disturbing sentence about one long, disturbing thing.
rating: 3.5


DAY THIRTEEN: AMIRA WHO KNOWS BY RAWAA SONBOL
this collection has welcomed me into lives i never would have thought existed.
rating: 4.5


DAY FOURTEEN: PETITE MORT BY ZANTA NKUMANE
i personally may not have brought a date with my father's name to my father's funeral, but they don't write short stories about me.
rating: 3.5


DAY FIFTEEN: GIRL BY JAMAICA KINCAID
damn. at this point seeing this table of contents is like reading through the 2021-2023 all things go lineup. a-list.
rating: 4.5


DAY SIXTEEN: THE FRUIT OF MY WOMAN BY HAN KANG
kang writes either weird and unforgettable fiction about women devolving (this) or clean, simple writing about unimaginable suffering. both are exceptional.
rating: 4


DAY SEVENTEEN: VERTICAL MOTION BY CAN XUE
the subterranean critters yearn for sunlight.
rating: 3.5


DAY EIGHTEEN: YOU CAN'T GET LOST IN CAPE TOWN BY ZOE WICOMB
i comprehended and appreciated every choice this made except for the lengthy description of ladies eating chicken legs on the bus.
rating: 3.5


DAY NINETEEN: SQUATTING BY DIAO DOU
25 pages on assault and bureaucracy. they can't all be winners.
rating: 3


DAY TWENTY: SPARKS BY CAROL BENSIMON
this is a story about thinking about doing something and then not doing it. so not very eventful, in other words.
rating: 3.5


DAY TWENTY-ONE: EXHALATION BY TED CHIANG
14 pages on fantastical anatomy. feels like we've reached the "homework" section of the book.
rating: 3


DAY TWENTY-TWO: THE UGLIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD BY OLGA TOKARCZUK
the thing about the Ugliest Woman is she is still a bajillion times better than the inside of the average man.
rating: 4


DAY TWENTY-THREE: THE GOOD DENIS BY MARIE NDIAYE
oh, i hated a book by this author! let's see how this goes.

yup. more adjectives in this short story than in most entire novels.
rating: 2


DAY TWENTY-FOUR: FROGS BY MO YAN
if you get attacked by a horde of hundreds of frogs you get to marry an aging famous sculptor. not a trade i would make but i'm happy for our old maid obstetrician.
rating: 3.5


DAY TWENTY-FIVE: ON THE OCCASION OF OUR FOURTH DIVORCE ANNIVERSARY BY LANA BASTASIC
how chic.
rating: 4


DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: LOBA LAMAR'S LAST KISS BY PEDRO LEMEBEL
<3
rating: 4


DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: THE FREE RADIO BY SALMAN RUSHDIE
not the insidious power of dreams...
rating: 3.5


DAY TWENTY-NINE: THE WOUNDED MAN BY ABDELLAH TAIA
you really can put a random movie on tv and change your life.
rating: 4

(thanks to the publisher for the copy)

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories are a distinctive form but perhaps I prefer them in collections where I know the author rather than in anthologies such as this one. I like the politics of this collection ('As Americans, we tend to think that how we see the world is how everybody else does', as the introduction remarks) but I'm disappointed that I didn't make any discoveries of new authors.

The stories I liked most were by authors I already knew, and I'd even read a couple of the tales before ('My Sad Dead' by Mariana Enriquez, 'An Unlucky Man' by Samanta Schweblin)- my favourites are the uncanny 'The Flower Garden' by Mieko Kawakami; 'Offside' by Christina Rivera Garza; and 'On the Occasion of our Fourth Divorce Anniversary' by Lana Bastasic. The only two by unknown authors to me that raised my literary interest are 'Forty-Eight Steps' by Paxima Mojavezi and 'Petite Mort' by Zanta Nkumane - small pickings from thirty-four stories and over 400 pages. That's not to criticise the selection, but rather to note that my taste just didn't chime with that of the editors.

Something I've noted before from my reading of literature in contemporary translation is that there's a sort of generic 'translator's English' that feels bland and samey and which, somehow, doesn't seem to convey what must, surely, be stylistic differences in the original. These stories in this collection, more or less, are told with the same 'voice' regardless of whether they're speaking of Bangladesh, Lebanon, China, Norway, Ireland, the Caribbean or Rwanda.

I was so excited when I saw this book but, sadly, it hasn't lived up to my expectations. It's definitely worth a read but it wasn't as eye-opening, surprising and revelatory as I'd hoped.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Penguin Book of the International Short Story is a diverse, multi genre, truly international collection of stories from authors some of whom I have read before, others I have wanted to read and still others I now want to read again. I found it to be a largely successful compilation. The writers of these 34 stories come from almost every continent and reflect social and cultural situations of varying settings, time and place.

Among my favorites are: Exhalation by Ted Chiang, The Free Radio by Salman Rushdie, Offside by Christina Rivera Garza, A Bright and Ambitious Good-Hearted Leftist by Adania Shibli, and Frogs by Mo Yan. Brief biographies of the authors and translators are provided at the end of the book.

I do recommend this book for short story readers interested in what the world has to offer.

Thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this book .

[Maudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

it feels like travelling around the world and tasting each country’s cultural foods

[Tracey Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Penguin Book of the International Short Story is a dream tome for anyone who loves short stories, or translated fiction, or both! This anthology contains over 30 “international” stories (in this sense, international means non-US), translated to English from Persian, Swedish, Spanish, Polish, Korean, Chinese; the list goes on. Rabid Alameddine and John Freeman have gathered a varied collection, and pretty much all the stories are worth a read.

I’m a huge fan of short stories, and I loved being introduced to new writers, as well as being reminded of some classics.

Below are some of my favorites:

The Weird

Superfrog Saves Tokyo, by Haruki Murakami (Japanese, translator Jay Rubin) - A loan collector comes home to find a giant frog in his apartment, who wants him to help in fighting a Worm to save Tokyo from an earthquake. This is the first story in the anthology, and I feel like this was a “Cerberus” story; if you get past this one unscathed, you will more than likely enjoy the rest of the collection.

My Sad Dead, by Mariana Enriquez (Spanish, trans. Megan McDowell) - A woman lives in a rough neighborhood, but does not want to leave because the ghost of her dead mother still lives with her. The woman sees other ghosts too, most importantly, young people who have died. This is absolutely heartbreaking. Enriquez is one of my favorite writers.

The Fruit of My Woman, by Han Kong (Korean, trans. Deborah Smith) - This one was oddly moving. A woman begins to find strange bruises on herself, before starting a strange transformation. Told from the perspective of the woman and her partner, this is a brilliantly unconventional love story.

An Unlucky Man, by Samanta Schweblin (Spanish, trans. Megan McDowell) - Along with Enriquez, Schweblin is another of my favorites. A surreal tale of a girl somewhat abducted while in a hospital waiting room. Like a lot of Schweblin’s work, there is a dreamy, uncanny feeling to this story.

War of the Clowns, by Mia Couto (Portuguese, trans. Eric M. B. Becker) - file this under weird, but also chillingly prescient. A brief fable, beginning as a small fight between two literal clowns, which escalates, and embroils a whole town. I had to take a breather after this one.

Beautiful and Heartbreaking

The Illumination of Santiago, Nona Fernandez Silanes (Spanish, trans. Idra Novey) - A gorgeous little tale about electric street lights being installed for the first time in Santiago. Told from the perspective of a young girl, who has literally never seen anything like it before.

Amira, Who Knows, by Rawaa Sonbol (Arabic, trans. Katharine Halls) - A woman in her seventies sits outside some public toilets, and watches. There is a lot of sadness in this story, but a lot of love too.

The Flower Garden, by Mieko Kawakami (Japanese, trans. Hitomi Yoshio) - Oh my word, this story is heartbreaking. A woman loses her home and her beloved garden due to her husband’s misdeeds, and is forced to sell to a young, single woman. Lots of resentment here, and some cringeworthy behavior. A wonderful story.

You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, by Zoe Wicomb - This is the most upsetting story in the collection. A young girl makes a fateful, life-changing bus journey with her boyfriend. An absolutely devastating ending.

[Seung]

4.14. 26 Really liking the Norweigian story Apples, so far. Which I would not have said before reading this anthology. I have personal ties to this book as the previous book on American Short stories, I picked up in Sitka and in Anchorage. During a time where I desperately challenged what it means to be American by living as an American.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and The Penguin Press for an advance copy of this anthology a survey of the short story from writers all over the world dealing with universal themes, universal worries, told in various lengths, and across different eras and levels of reality.

My love for short stories, probably my love of reading in general came from the many genre books that my library had that contained short stories. In these collections I discovered science fiction, fantasy, mystery horror, the supernatural, mystery, noir and more. I remember clearly my love of Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery and Spellbinders in Suspense, books I took out all the time reading the stories over and over as if they were new. Martin H. Greenberg was probably the Pope of Anthologies, editing so many different collections that introduced me to authors and genres that I never thought I might like. I love short stories because of the craft it takes to make a tale in just a page, or a few pages. Short stories are a skill, a skill shown by the authors in this collection, a collection spanning the world, time and even genres. The Penguin Book of the International Short Story is edited by Rabih Alameddine and John Freeman, featuring stories from numerous countries, with numerous points of view, some autobiographical, some historical, some painful, some funny, but all extremely revealing about how much we share as a species.

The book begins with a very good essay about how international collections always seemed to be as written by Rabih Alameddine, who is both editor and has a story featured in this collection. Most international anthologies were mostly in English, with Ireland and Australia added for flavor. Alameddine discusses the art of translation which has become as much an art as writing the stories, with more care given not only to meaning, but in keeping what makes the story unique. From there we travel the world, to a small city getting lights for the first time, allowing people to see each other. To a city of ghosts, blaming the living for their circumstances. Frogs save Tokyo, or bring two people together. Other stories of the supernatural, along with tales of love found, lost, and love that might have been. Snow trapped cities, people finding themselves, or getting lost in the world they find themselves in.

There are very few collections that I read straight through. Not all tales can appeal to a reader. Some hit, some miss, some are just ehh. This one is one of the rare ones where I read every story first word to last, and enjoyed almost all of them immensely. Some were not for me, and yet the writing was so good, I still had to know what happened. There are a lot of familiar writers, Murakami, Ted Chiang, and a lot of authors I have read before like Olga Tokarczuk and Mia Coulto, which remind me that I have to read more by them. One of the best was Mariana Enriquez, with her story about ghosts in a neighborhood. This story had quite an impact in many different ways. I have read her book Our Share of the Night, and enjoyed it, but this story, really stayed with me. I can say this about many of these stories. Supernatural, historical, love, getting by, even stories about genocide. I can't think of a stronger collection I have read.

The translations too are quite good, and really help an ignorant American like myself understand and appreciate the wide world that is out there, a world that is rich and complicated, sad, and wonderful. I can't write about this collection highly enough. A great introduction to a lot of writers to be added to people to be read lists. A collection not to be missed.

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Penguin Book of the International Short Story is a collection of tales from around the world, featuring highlights from stalwarts such as Haruki Murakami and Mariana Enriquez as well as lesser known authors. Rabih Alameddine and John Freeman do an excellent job in editing: the flow of stories often feels organically perfect, connected by small themes or tropes. There were a couple "missteps"—I was disappointed to find that Carol Bensimon's story was simply the first chapter of her novel, and felt like Samanta Schweblin's story was an unsettling way to end an anthology—but overall I loved digging into this collection and discovering so many new authors.

Some of my favorite stories in this collection were expected—Kang, Murakami, Rushdie, Chiang, Schweblin, Enriquez. Others were wholly new to me, or a surprise. "Amira, Who Knows," by Rawaa Sonbol, translated from Arabic by Katherine Halls, about an old woman who runs a public toilet; "Frogs" by Mo Yan, translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt, a surprisingly terrifying folktale-like story; "On the Occasion of Our Fourth Divorce Anniversary," a stream-of-consciousness-like tale by Bosnian writer Lana Bastašić. In "Petite Mort" by Zanta Nkumane, a gay man brings a new lover to his father's funeral. In "The Flower Garden" by Mieko Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Hitomi Yoshio, a woman who loses her house to her husband's bankruptcy can't bear to see her garden slip from her hands.

But there's something in here for everyone, from realism to horror to surrealism to near-poetry; from Japanese to Persian, Polish, Indonesian, Arabic; from Mozambique to Korea to Palestine. Frogs swarm, people grasp at what they've lost, ghosts proliferate, Delightful to read story by story or all the way through, it's a must-have for fans of literature in translation and global reading, and for those less familiar, it's a perfect introduction to some of the best authors on earth today.

Content warnings (spread throughout the stories) for domestic violence, sexual assault & harassment, homophobia, body horror, suicide, sterilization, pedophilia, torture, graphic abortion.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy reading short stories especially as a palate cleanser before committing to a longer book. The Penguin Book of the International Short Story is a great collection of stories from around the world so you don't need to travel far in order to be immersed in something new. There's a rich variety of voices, settings, characters and writing styles while also making it clear that some parts of the human experience are universal. As with any collection that includes different authors, some stories feel stronger or resonate more with me as a reader, but I can also imagine that other readers would greatly enjoy the stories that weren't quite for me. I've previously read some of the authors in this book so it's like visiting something familiar, other authors are completely new to me and I'm intrigued to read their other books and stories. What I love about collections of short stories is that you can read the whole book or you can pick one or two (or three) stories to read and then come back to read more at a later time. This collection includes many stories that I'd like to re-read because I think I'll get something new or deeper from a reread. 4.5/5

Many thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for the e-ARC.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up for the Mariana Enriquez story but stayed for the absolutely fantastic collection of stories from around the world.

This collection touched on so many compelling issues — loneliness, estrangement, genocide, war, patriarchal exploitation of women, obsession, solidarity and more. I was impressed by every one of them and by the number of countries represented in this volume. I definitely see this book as an opportunity to find a new favorite author or two.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love Penguin short story collections, and this is a fantastic one. There were a few authors I've read before, but not their short stories (Murakami, Rushdie, Han Kang), and only a couple of the stories I'd read before (Exhalation, Girl) but very importantly, there were a lot of great works by authors I hadn't been exposed to before, and would love to continue to seek out. Have the kindle version, but this is one that I'll purchase physically for note-taking and to return to often!

Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for access to the ARC.

[Christi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection was truly awesome. I can tell that every selection was very thoughtfully and intentionally chosen. I would recommend this to anyone trying to get more into translated and international fiction.
My favorites below:
- Superfrog Saves Tokyo by Haruki Murakami
- The July War by Rabih Alameddine
- Garments by Tahmima Anam

[JXR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, gorgeous, and well-written set of short stories with wild vibes, from authors like Olga Tokarczuk, Salman Rushdie, Han Kang, and Haruki Murakami. Would recommend. 5 stars. tysm for the E-ARC.

[Jireh · Rating 4 out of 5]

well, that was a lot of stories to get through! some were great, some were okay, and one genuinely pissed me off lol still, the medium of the short story is something i genuinely love

(surprisingly, 2 stories in this collection i've actually read before)

[hania · Rating 3 out of 5]

LOOOOOOOOVED the concept of this book we should have one like that every year