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The Penguin Book of the International Short Story
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Literary Hub
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 in 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 amphibian is enlisting him to protect his city from an impending earthquake. In “War of the Clowns,” Mozambique’s Mia Couto sketches a perfect allegory for our divided culture. In the predecessor story to her iconic novel The Vegetarian, Han Kang depicts a protagonist quietly undergoing 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, Abdellah Taïa to the queer Arab world, Ted Chiang to a far-off galaxy.
The United States is far from the center of the literary universe. This 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—the work of thoughtful and accomplished translators opens the door wide for those curious about what lies beyond the Western canon and classroom. Writers from six continents, ranging from new voices to literary icons, each offer a window into a distinct point of view, both transcending and illuminating their place of origin. They offer not only captivating prose, but a reminder of the power of the imagination across space and time.
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 in 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 amphibian is enlisting him to protect his city from an impending earthquake. In “War of the Clowns,” Mozambique’s Mia Couto sketches a perfect allegory for our divided culture. In the predecessor story to her iconic novel The Vegetarian, Han Kang depicts a protagonist quietly undergoing 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, Abdellah Taïa to the queer Arab world, Ted Chiang to a far-off galaxy.
The United States is far from the center of the literary universe. This 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—the work of thoughtful and accomplished translators opens the door wide for those curious about what lies beyond the Western canon and classroom. Writers from six continents, ranging from new voices to literary icons, each offer a window into a distinct point of view, both transcending and illuminating their place of origin. They offer not only captivating prose, but a reminder of the power of the imagination across space and time.
443 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 7, 2026
About the author
Rabih Alameddine
21 books1,063 followersRabih 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 22, 2026
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-SIX: LOBA LAMAR'S LAST KISS BY PEDRO LEMEBEL
<3
rating: 4
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: THE FREE RADIO BY SALMAN RUSHDIE
not the insidious power of dreams...
rating: 3.5
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: THE WOUNDED MAN BY ABDELLAH TAIA
you really can put a random movie on tv and change your life.
rating: 4
DAY TWENTY-NINE: FORTY-EIGHT STEPS BY PAXIMA MOJAVEZI
i have no idea what just happened but i'm not mad.
rating: 3.5
DAY THIRTY: MAGNIFICAT BY LINNEA AXELSSON
this was about way too much to be a vague short story.
rating: 3
DAY THIRTY-ONE: AN AMBITIOUS GOOD-HEARTED LEFTIST BY ADANIA SHIBLI
a short story about subverting israeli authorities by the author of minor detail? it's a hard yes from me.
rating: 4.5
DAY THIRTY-TWO: ISLANDS BY ALEKSANDAR HEMON
half childhood family vacation, half unspeakable horrors.
rating: 3.5
DAY THIRTY-THREE: OFFSIDE BY CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA
i'm about ready to call it. i don't think this author's style works for me.
rating: 3
DAY THIRTY-FOUR: AN UNLUCKY MAN BY SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN
well that was weird.
rating: 3
OVERALL
what a wildly impressive undertaking, to set out to compile THE book of the international short story. maybe even an act of hubris. still, when you think of the scale, it makes sense that there were some duds in here — and all the better that i had the chance to discover masterpieces.
rating: 4
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
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-SIX: LOBA LAMAR'S LAST KISS BY PEDRO LEMEBEL
<3
rating: 4
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: THE FREE RADIO BY SALMAN RUSHDIE
not the insidious power of dreams...
rating: 3.5
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: THE WOUNDED MAN BY ABDELLAH TAIA
you really can put a random movie on tv and change your life.
rating: 4
DAY TWENTY-NINE: FORTY-EIGHT STEPS BY PAXIMA MOJAVEZI
i have no idea what just happened but i'm not mad.
rating: 3.5
DAY THIRTY: MAGNIFICAT BY LINNEA AXELSSON
this was about way too much to be a vague short story.
rating: 3
DAY THIRTY-ONE: AN AMBITIOUS GOOD-HEARTED LEFTIST BY ADANIA SHIBLI
a short story about subverting israeli authorities by the author of minor detail? it's a hard yes from me.
rating: 4.5
DAY THIRTY-TWO: ISLANDS BY ALEKSANDAR HEMON
half childhood family vacation, half unspeakable horrors.
rating: 3.5
DAY THIRTY-THREE: OFFSIDE BY CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA
i'm about ready to call it. i don't think this author's style works for me.
rating: 3
DAY THIRTY-FOUR: AN UNLUCKY MAN BY SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN
well that was weird.
rating: 3
OVERALL
what a wildly impressive undertaking, to set out to compile THE book of the international short story. maybe even an act of hubris. still, when you think of the scale, it makes sense that there were some duds in here — and all the better that i had the chance to discover masterpieces.
rating: 4
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
April 30, 2026
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.
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.
May 2, 2026
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 .
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 .
June 30, 2026
"We are lucky to be living at a time when the art of translation has improved drastically and the stories appear seamless. Without the ear and craft of these immensely talented readers, none of us could hear this music from elsewhere."
I loved this collection! I found so many authors I want to read more of, and short stories I want to add to my personal favorites collection.
SUPER-FROG SAVES TOKYO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI - JAPAN 3.5
The title says it all. Quintessential Murakami. Weird, surreal, and with an ambiguous ending that will have you questioning reality.
THE ILLUMINATION OF SANTIAGO BY NONA FERNANDEZ - CHILE 4.0
a sliver of a story with staying power about a childhood memory that may or may not be fabricated. this is the kind of story that stays. gorgeous. writing. I was reminded of creation stories & the parallel btw the discovery of fire and the advent of electricity. This is an excerpt from her novel Chilean Electric. Need to read ASAP.
"she told me the first thing she thought was that the electric light must be dangerous, given how fast it got rid of the shadows. she told me the electric light played tricks with time and that no one, not even someone with an illuminated mind, could do that."
"she showed me the logo with her wrinkled, pale hand, like a testimony of the night when, according to her, we began cheating with time."
APPLES BY GUNNHILD OYEHAUG - NORWAY 5.0
BEAUTIFUL metafiction. Perhaps my favorite in the entire collection. About the desire to freeze time (among other things).
MY SAD DEAD BY MARIANA ENRIQUEZ - ARGENTINA 5.0
Sometimes ghosts haunt us, but maybe we haunt them too. I liked the idea of ghosts being this monument to individual and societal memory.
"I tell him that fascism generally starts with fear and then turns into hatred."
About violence and the blind eye we begin to turn when its normalized & the ensuing guilt when the things we've been avoiding come back to haunt us.
WAR OF THE CLOWNS BY MIA COUTO - MOZAMBIQUE 2.5
Felt like watching Fox News. A little parable reminiscent of what we are going through in the USA with MAGA. Political stagecraft.
ONE MINUS ONE BY COLM TOIBIN - IRELAND 5.0
a story about a man who feels at home no where. complicated mother relationship. Autobiographical. lovvvee auto fiction. the MC's relationship with his mother mirrors his relationship with Ireland.
"You know that I do not believe in God. I do not care much about the mysteries of the universe, unless they come to me in words, or in music maybe, or in a set of colours."
THE FLOWER GARDEN BY MIEKO KAWAKAMI - JAPAN 5.0
About ownership and female independence & marriage.
NIGHT WOMEN BY EDWIDGE DANTICAT - HAITI 2.75
Lush writing in some spots but I didn't like how the woman talked about her son.
THE JULY WAR - LEBANON 4.5
childhood and regular life during times of war and strife. normalcy amidst brutality. the absurdities of what people focus on when in the midst of destruction. This is an exploration of masculinity & sexuality against the backdrop of war.
CATTLE PRAISE SONG BY SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA - RWANDA 3.0
about the Rwandan genocide and about the past. steeped in memory and longing. About living through cruelty and how the characters cope, similar to The July War & Garments. Also, reminded me of Yesteryear.
GARMENTS BY TAHMIMA ANAM - BANGLADESH 4.0
three women try to make a way from themselves despite their bad circumstances. A poignant display of females strength and solidarity
ROTTEN STENCH BY EKA KURNIAWAN - INDONESIA 3.5
One long sentence about complacency & complicity. Pairs well with my sad dead. Reminded me of what certain people in our society think about immigrants and those with differing political views.
"history has taught us to endure all kinds of horror and evil and we are used to forgetting it all just as quickly as we forget every act of piety, because everyone ultimately dies in the end and all corpses ultimately give off a rotten stench, and we will still read our newspapers and drink our coffee and play soccer and make babies, in other words we will continue to enjoy our lives in the middle of this rotten stench."
AMIRA WHO KNOWS BY RAWAA SONBOL - SYRIA 4.0
I really love how this collection is bringing me to people and places I never knew existed. I found it charming to read a story about an older woman that manages a toilet stall. A unique story about loneliness and normalcy.
PETITE MORT BY ZANTA NKUMANE - ESWATINI 4.0
Reminded me alot of Ocean Vuong. Gorgeous prose, if a little purple at times. About loss and grief and acceptance. sex is the language this character uses to experience his grief.
"As they lower his casket into the ground, you wonder if the parts a person contributes to you die with them too."
GIRL BY JAMAICA KINCAID - ANTIGUA 5.0
Gender roles and misogyny.
THE FRUIT OF MY WOMAN BY HAN KANG - SOUTH KOREA 4.0
A love Kang! This is the precursor to The Vegtatarian. Weird, botanical and amazing, this is about the ways in which men consume women (figuratively and literallllly).
VERTICAL MOTION BY CAN XUE - CHINA 2.0
An unfortunate weird bore.
YOU CAN'T GET LOST IN CAPE TOWN BY ZOE WICOMB - SOUTH AFRICA 5.0
Perfection. About race, abortion, and class.
SQUATTING BY DIAO DOU - CHINA 2.5
Political satire but it was toooooooooo long and bored me to tears.
SPARKS BY CAROL BENSIMON - BRAZIL 3.75
Left me wanting more, in a good way. A story of a friendship and a long dreamed of roadtrip. Queer undertones.
EXHALATION BY TED CHIANG - AMERICA 3.0
I am not a big sci-fi person but this worked for me. A bleak yet hopeful look at a civilizations downfall. Reminded me of a twist on Frankenstein.
THE UGLIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD BY OLGA TOKARCZUK - POLAND 4.0
I love Tokarczuk. This is a good example of her writing for anyone interested. Asks who are the real monsters—those that look like them, or those that ACT like them.
THE GOOD DENIS BY MARIE NDIAYE - FRANCE 4.0
About a woman haunted by her mothers memories. Some dark comedy here that I enjoyed.
FROGS BY MO YAN - CHINA 4.0
WEIRD and AMAZING and terrifying! A look at the one child policy and the resulting abortion culture and the ramifications on the doctors that perform them.
ON THE OCCASION OF OUR FOURTH DIVORCE ANNIVERSARY BY LANA BASTASIC - BOSNIA 4.0
Reminiscent of Sally Rooney. Very smart, funny & poignant.
LOBA LAMAR'S LAST KISS BY PEDRO LEMEBEL - CHILE 5.0
One of my favorites. Gorgeous, surprising, and uplifting in the face of death. About AIDS and dignity in death.
THE FREE RADIO BY SALMAN RUSHDIE - INDIA (BRITISH-AMERICAN) 4.0
My first Rushdie! About forced sterilization, indian propaganda and one happy fool.
THE WOUNDED MAN BY ABDELLAH TAIA - MOROCCO FRANCE 4.5
Art can change how you see the world.
An elegant story of one mans struggle with sexuality, paired with the love of film. Deeply human.
"solitude is a slow and dolorous poison."
"Love, like life, which at certain miraculous moments burns with light and intensity, is a tragedy. I knew that, knew it intuitively. I was twenty years old. "The Wounded Man" taught me that, taught it to me once and for all. I had been warned. The choice was mine. Would I give up? Never."
FORTY-EIGHT STEPS BY PAXIMA MOJAVEZI - IRAN 4.0
A short, sharp, cold story about a woman in an unhappy relationship. I loved the cyclical framing of this story.
MAGNIFICAT BY LINNEA AXELSSON - SWEDEN 4.0
Mental health crisis or ghostly visitation? I loved the atmosphere of this story. Another interesting depiction of grief and fraught relatioships. Also more commentary on motherhood.
AN AMBITIOUS GOOD-HEARTED LEFTIST BY ADANIA SHIBLI - PALESTINE 4.0
Free Palestine, read more Palestinian literature!
ISLANDS BY ALEKSANDAR HEMON - BOSNIA/AMERICA 4.0
coming of age story about one boys innocence lost on a summer family trip. This one is magical and grimy and a good example of why parents should shield their children from violence when possible. Children should not grow up too soon.
OFFSIDE BY CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA - MEXICO 4.0
A little bit disjointed but a lot atmospheric. about the loss of self in motherhood (and maybe in relationships). I loved the perpetual winter setting.
AN UNLUCKY MAN BY SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN - ARGENTINA/ GERMANY 5.0
Dark and unsettling story about how easily children can mistake inappropriate behavior for kindness.
OVERALL 4.25
I loved this collection! I found so many authors I want to read more of, and short stories I want to add to my personal favorites collection.
SUPER-FROG SAVES TOKYO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI - JAPAN 3.5
The title says it all. Quintessential Murakami. Weird, surreal, and with an ambiguous ending that will have you questioning reality.
THE ILLUMINATION OF SANTIAGO BY NONA FERNANDEZ - CHILE 4.0
a sliver of a story with staying power about a childhood memory that may or may not be fabricated. this is the kind of story that stays. gorgeous. writing. I was reminded of creation stories & the parallel btw the discovery of fire and the advent of electricity. This is an excerpt from her novel Chilean Electric. Need to read ASAP.
"she told me the first thing she thought was that the electric light must be dangerous, given how fast it got rid of the shadows. she told me the electric light played tricks with time and that no one, not even someone with an illuminated mind, could do that."
"she showed me the logo with her wrinkled, pale hand, like a testimony of the night when, according to her, we began cheating with time."
APPLES BY GUNNHILD OYEHAUG - NORWAY 5.0
BEAUTIFUL metafiction. Perhaps my favorite in the entire collection. About the desire to freeze time (among other things).
MY SAD DEAD BY MARIANA ENRIQUEZ - ARGENTINA 5.0
Sometimes ghosts haunt us, but maybe we haunt them too. I liked the idea of ghosts being this monument to individual and societal memory.
"I tell him that fascism generally starts with fear and then turns into hatred."
About violence and the blind eye we begin to turn when its normalized & the ensuing guilt when the things we've been avoiding come back to haunt us.
WAR OF THE CLOWNS BY MIA COUTO - MOZAMBIQUE 2.5
Felt like watching Fox News. A little parable reminiscent of what we are going through in the USA with MAGA. Political stagecraft.
ONE MINUS ONE BY COLM TOIBIN - IRELAND 5.0
a story about a man who feels at home no where. complicated mother relationship. Autobiographical. lovvvee auto fiction. the MC's relationship with his mother mirrors his relationship with Ireland.
"You know that I do not believe in God. I do not care much about the mysteries of the universe, unless they come to me in words, or in music maybe, or in a set of colours."
THE FLOWER GARDEN BY MIEKO KAWAKAMI - JAPAN 5.0
About ownership and female independence & marriage.
NIGHT WOMEN BY EDWIDGE DANTICAT - HAITI 2.75
Lush writing in some spots but I didn't like how the woman talked about her son.
THE JULY WAR - LEBANON 4.5
childhood and regular life during times of war and strife. normalcy amidst brutality. the absurdities of what people focus on when in the midst of destruction. This is an exploration of masculinity & sexuality against the backdrop of war.
CATTLE PRAISE SONG BY SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA - RWANDA 3.0
about the Rwandan genocide and about the past. steeped in memory and longing. About living through cruelty and how the characters cope, similar to The July War & Garments. Also, reminded me of Yesteryear.
GARMENTS BY TAHMIMA ANAM - BANGLADESH 4.0
three women try to make a way from themselves despite their bad circumstances. A poignant display of females strength and solidarity
ROTTEN STENCH BY EKA KURNIAWAN - INDONESIA 3.5
One long sentence about complacency & complicity. Pairs well with my sad dead. Reminded me of what certain people in our society think about immigrants and those with differing political views.
"history has taught us to endure all kinds of horror and evil and we are used to forgetting it all just as quickly as we forget every act of piety, because everyone ultimately dies in the end and all corpses ultimately give off a rotten stench, and we will still read our newspapers and drink our coffee and play soccer and make babies, in other words we will continue to enjoy our lives in the middle of this rotten stench."
AMIRA WHO KNOWS BY RAWAA SONBOL - SYRIA 4.0
I really love how this collection is bringing me to people and places I never knew existed. I found it charming to read a story about an older woman that manages a toilet stall. A unique story about loneliness and normalcy.
PETITE MORT BY ZANTA NKUMANE - ESWATINI 4.0
Reminded me alot of Ocean Vuong. Gorgeous prose, if a little purple at times. About loss and grief and acceptance. sex is the language this character uses to experience his grief.
"As they lower his casket into the ground, you wonder if the parts a person contributes to you die with them too."
GIRL BY JAMAICA KINCAID - ANTIGUA 5.0
Gender roles and misogyny.
THE FRUIT OF MY WOMAN BY HAN KANG - SOUTH KOREA 4.0
A love Kang! This is the precursor to The Vegtatarian. Weird, botanical and amazing, this is about the ways in which men consume women (figuratively and literallllly).
VERTICAL MOTION BY CAN XUE - CHINA 2.0
An unfortunate weird bore.
YOU CAN'T GET LOST IN CAPE TOWN BY ZOE WICOMB - SOUTH AFRICA 5.0
Perfection. About race, abortion, and class.
SQUATTING BY DIAO DOU - CHINA 2.5
Political satire but it was toooooooooo long and bored me to tears.
SPARKS BY CAROL BENSIMON - BRAZIL 3.75
Left me wanting more, in a good way. A story of a friendship and a long dreamed of roadtrip. Queer undertones.
EXHALATION BY TED CHIANG - AMERICA 3.0
I am not a big sci-fi person but this worked for me. A bleak yet hopeful look at a civilizations downfall. Reminded me of a twist on Frankenstein.
THE UGLIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD BY OLGA TOKARCZUK - POLAND 4.0
I love Tokarczuk. This is a good example of her writing for anyone interested. Asks who are the real monsters—those that look like them, or those that ACT like them.
THE GOOD DENIS BY MARIE NDIAYE - FRANCE 4.0
About a woman haunted by her mothers memories. Some dark comedy here that I enjoyed.
FROGS BY MO YAN - CHINA 4.0
WEIRD and AMAZING and terrifying! A look at the one child policy and the resulting abortion culture and the ramifications on the doctors that perform them.
ON THE OCCASION OF OUR FOURTH DIVORCE ANNIVERSARY BY LANA BASTASIC - BOSNIA 4.0
Reminiscent of Sally Rooney. Very smart, funny & poignant.
LOBA LAMAR'S LAST KISS BY PEDRO LEMEBEL - CHILE 5.0
One of my favorites. Gorgeous, surprising, and uplifting in the face of death. About AIDS and dignity in death.
THE FREE RADIO BY SALMAN RUSHDIE - INDIA (BRITISH-AMERICAN) 4.0
My first Rushdie! About forced sterilization, indian propaganda and one happy fool.
THE WOUNDED MAN BY ABDELLAH TAIA - MOROCCO FRANCE 4.5
Art can change how you see the world.
An elegant story of one mans struggle with sexuality, paired with the love of film. Deeply human.
"solitude is a slow and dolorous poison."
"Love, like life, which at certain miraculous moments burns with light and intensity, is a tragedy. I knew that, knew it intuitively. I was twenty years old. "The Wounded Man" taught me that, taught it to me once and for all. I had been warned. The choice was mine. Would I give up? Never."
FORTY-EIGHT STEPS BY PAXIMA MOJAVEZI - IRAN 4.0
A short, sharp, cold story about a woman in an unhappy relationship. I loved the cyclical framing of this story.
MAGNIFICAT BY LINNEA AXELSSON - SWEDEN 4.0
Mental health crisis or ghostly visitation? I loved the atmosphere of this story. Another interesting depiction of grief and fraught relatioships. Also more commentary on motherhood.
AN AMBITIOUS GOOD-HEARTED LEFTIST BY ADANIA SHIBLI - PALESTINE 4.0
Free Palestine, read more Palestinian literature!
ISLANDS BY ALEKSANDAR HEMON - BOSNIA/AMERICA 4.0
coming of age story about one boys innocence lost on a summer family trip. This one is magical and grimy and a good example of why parents should shield their children from violence when possible. Children should not grow up too soon.
OFFSIDE BY CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA - MEXICO 4.0
A little bit disjointed but a lot atmospheric. about the loss of self in motherhood (and maybe in relationships). I loved the perpetual winter setting.
AN UNLUCKY MAN BY SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN - ARGENTINA/ GERMANY 5.0
Dark and unsettling story about how easily children can mistake inappropriate behavior for kindness.
OVERALL 4.25
June 17, 2026
Was going to read about a story a day for the month of June but the collection was way too addictive and I finished this in half the time.
My purely mathematical story-by-story average comes out to ~4/5, but I’m giving the collection 4.5/5 overall because the highs were really high. I discovered a few new favorites, got to read new-to-me stories from some of my favorite authors, and I do feel grateful for all the pieces I maybe wouldn't have gotten to read or wouldn't've found otherwise.
4.5/5
------------
[currently reading] this collection has assembled some of my favorite living authors like they're the Avengers and so far the stories are banger after banger, what. a. roster. 🙌
Tiny story notes as I go:
- Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, Haruki Murakami, translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin — 4.75/5 — so Murakami. absurd, lonely, tender & metaphysical.
- The Illumination of Santiago, Nona Fernández, translated from Spanish by Idra Novey — 4.25/5 — a sharp little electric light miniature, more image than story but still elegant as hell
- Apples, Gunnhild Øyehaug, translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson — 4.5/5 — i'm a sucker for metafiction, and this is a nesting doll of stories using it as an emotional tool. I enjoyed the story for the same reasons I enjoy metafiction -- yes, irony/cleverness can be used to hide from sincerity, but art & form can also reveal genuine feeling.
- My Sad Dead, Mariana Enriquez, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell — 4.75/5 — I knew Enriquez could write a ~600 page horror but now I know she can also deliver a punch in short story form too. A ghost story about fascism beginning with fear and how a society that refuses to protect the vulnerable will be haunted by the people it abandons
- War of the Clowns, Mia Couto, translated from Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker — 4.25/5 — tiny but absolutely vicious political fable that in its two (!) freaking pages says so much about how quickly society sees violence as a spectacle and who profits from all the nonsense and chaos.
- One Minus One, Colm Tóibín — 4.5/5 — so skillfully done. Sometimes I think quiet, restrained, and devastating is harder to pull off but this captured grief as subtraction in a way that's not only losing someone, but also losing the possibility that the relationship could ever be explained, repaired, or made whole. Loved how he works through contrasts: neutral zero vs. emptiness zero, how he sees Texas as an unhaunted blankness vs. Ireland as a place hollowed out by what’s missing. All that restraint somehow made the grief louder.
- The Flower Garden, Mieko Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Hitomi Yoshio — 4.75/5 — probably my favorite so far for the journey it took me on, this was a wild ride -- started as social satire that had me chuckling, then turned into domestic horror about building an identity around something never fully yours.
- Night Women, Edwidge Danticat — 4.75/5 — the starkness of the mother and child’s situation against the lushness of the language made everything ache even more.
- The July War, Rabih Alameddine — 3.75/5 — coming-of-age under war is already terrifying enough but then there’s also contending with the patriarchal rot that starts in the home: the performance of masculinity and adults delivering corrupted and cruel ‘wisdom’ to young boys. Lots of details packed in (narrator’s awkwardness, humor, messiness, diaper hoarding, the father’s hypocrisy, the whole claustrophobic family life, violence, etc), but that gives it lots of human texture to hold onto.
- Cattle Praise Song, Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from French by Melanie Mauthner — 4.75/5 — I’m sensing a pattern of my favorite stories in this collection having gorgeous writing while being quietly devastating. This story prompted me to read more about Rwanda’s history and the genocide. I loved the time spent on the rituals of daily life with the cows; it made the story feel like a beautiful elegy.
- Garments, Tahmima Anam — 4/5 — young women working in a Bangladeshi garment factory try to find protection when being a woman in society leaves them dangerously exposed. Liked the chosen intimacy between women and that the ending was fragile yet hopeful.
- Rotten Stench, Eka Kurniawan, translated from Indonesian by Annie Tucker — 3.5/5 — i liked this, it's like one long breath of horror about how once a society accepts one category of people as killable/disposable, it becomes much easier to accept the next. I wish these political fables about becoming numbed to atrocities and normalization of massacre weren’t as terrifyingly relevant as they are. This was less emotionally tender and less narratively layered than other stories in this collection, but formally it’s doing exactly what it wants to do, and it also made me read more about anti-communist massacres and state violence in Indonesia.
- Amira Who Knows, Rwaa Sonbol, translated from Arabic by Katharine Halls — 4/5 — one solitary, lonely old woman watching over public toilets becomes the keeper of a broken city’s hidden life. Definitely fits this stretch of heavier, bleaker, devastating stories.
- Petite Mort, Zanta Nkumane — 3.25/5 — plot is strong (queerness, grief, a complicated father-son relationship, cultural funeral rituals, the smart ‘little death’ metaphor in the title/story), and I’d read a full novel of this premise, but in short story form it didn’t have the breathing room to keep the writing from being a bit too self-serious/a touch too eager to be admired; the metaphors were clever, sometimes beautiful, but often their polish pulled me out of the grief instead of deeper into it.
- Girl, Jamaica Kincaid — 5/5 — on a technical level to me it’s pretty formally flawless. Reminds me of a dark, absurd, more-layered version of the Barbie monologue but turned into a breathless mother-daughter instruction manual; it flits SO fast (to comedic effect) between practical survival knowledge and inherited, incessant, internalized shame, all adding up into the impossible rules of becoming a woman.
- The Fruit of My Woman, Han Kang, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith -- 5/5 — it was really cool to see the inspiration / seed-form of The Vegetarian. A woman starves for earth, air, and a place to grow, suffocated by marriage and the urban staleness of the city, but the real horror is the husband -- how he loves her most when she no longer speaks and finds her the most beautiful when she becomes something he can contain, water, and consume. Horrifying.
- Vertical Motion, Can Xue, translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping — 4.75/5 — weird little surrealist bug fable that lowkey cracked my brain open. Obsessed with the black soil/yellow sand image: such a good metaphor for existential striving, immigration, revolutions, protests, ancestry, planting trees you may never get to see...basically leaving the world you know for a harsher, more disorienting one where you can’t tell if you’re making progress or just exhausting yourself in place, and still moving upward anyway, a little closer to the light. Made me think too of Han Kang’s “throw light” image in 거울 저편의 겨울 2 from 서랍에 저녁을 넣어 두었다— that even if the light disperses, the act of throwing it still matters. Also made me think of Hwang Jungeun’s One Hundred Shadows, where the shadows always return, but the characters still hold hands, seek out the pockets of light, and keep singing. The short story like the poem and the novel end on the idea that transcendence isn't a destination but more like a condition of endless striving. One must imagine Sisyphus happy, after all.
- You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, Zoë Wicomb — 4/5 — brutal. place is never just place -- South Africa may have enough landmarks to mark directions/geography but apartheid leaves many lost emotionally inside the bleak geography of race, shame, fear, gender, laws.
- Squatting, Diao Dou, translated from Chinese by Brendan O’Kane — 3.5/5 — deliciously absurd bureaucratic satire about authoritarian problem-solving, bleakly funny bc the intellectuals, govt, and regulations are ridiculous, but the logic is horrifyingly familiar
- Sparks, Carol Bensimon, translated from Portuguese by Beth Fowler — 3/5 — awww, soft wistful little road-trip story. I liked the idea of two old friends finally taking the trip they once dreamed about, with the spark between them still there but maybe too delayed or too fragile to become fire. I wish the story was longer! — the narrative 'spark' itself developed just a little more.
- Exhalation, Ted Chiang — 5/5 — a reread for me, but yep, still hits. It really is a miracle that anything exists at all before the universe goes quiet. “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice.”
- The Ugliest Woman in the World, Olga Tokarczuk, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones — 3.5/5 — guess who the real monster is. Very Phantom of the Opera: “it’s in your soul that the true distortion lies.”
- The Good Denis, Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump — 3/5 — psychologically trippy, almost like a ghost story and almost gothic. I really liked the aspects that felt slippery -- the unstable memory and the messy relationship with the mother, all the everyday cruelty, suspicion, judgment of the characters -- that made the world feel three-dimensional quickly, though i wish it had been more even more atmospheric, even more bizarre. Also wish it would've leaned harder into the metaphysical dread! But I liked the central question it's asking -- what does “good” even mean when everyone uses it to explain everything and nothing? Denis’s goodness becomes oppressive because no one can define it except through vague aura (a scent, a thunderbolt, a slow fire), and that vagueness is the horror.
- Frogs, Mo Yan, translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt — 3.75/5 — the symbolism isn't subtle or shy but it feels blunt/more heavy-handed perhaps b/c the shadow of China’s family-planning policies and the violence of its reproductive politics is too morally huge for quiet realism. The strongest part of the writing/translation for me was the whole soundscape of her guilt, I could hear the chorus of mud, cries, croaks, skin, suction.
- On the Occasion of Our Fourth Divorce Anniversary, Lana Bastašić — 4.5/5 — Oh this was a total vibe. It’s so short and definitely has that tragicomic-breakup-musing, confessional, cool-girl thing that could become annoying in the wrong hands, but there’s a jagged self-awareness in the writing where it keeps puncturing its own aesthetic, and the form I think is great for making the flood of memories feel like one rush of association. It was funny and sharp and bruised and intellectual without feeling bloodless.
- Loba Lamar’s Last Kiss, Pedro Lemebel, translated from Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper — 5/5 — I was cry-laughing by the end, and this might be my favorite story in the collection so far. It’s an AIDS deathbed story, so yeah it’s heartbreaking, but it refuses the quiet-tragic voyeurism script often imposed on stories of queer suffering and feels more real and more glittery, campy, obscene, and hilarious and tender and devastating. Loba is a damn force -- vain, hella bossy, annoying, funny, glamorous, and so clearly adored by the queer family taking care of her. She never gets flattened into a sanitized and palatable tragic saint or some cautionary tale or a statistic, she stays herself until the end. The final scene was absolutely outrageous and indecent, but it’s also what made me laugh-cry, especially for the portrait of found family and community care in all its exhausted love and practical devotion. The ending to me is like one last revolt against death’s indignity. The world is cruel, AIDS is cruel, poverty is cruel, death is cruel, and still the locas are arguing over whether the scarf makes her look like Bugs Bunny. That’s humanity, baby.
- The Free Radio, Salman Rushdie — 3/5 — liked this, made me think of Foucault's idea of biopolitics and also Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power and Byung-Chul Han’s idea that power can also be dangerous when it manifests as an offer (with the illusion of freedom) instead of a threat. Here, Rushdie showed how easily hope itself can be turned into a tool of control. Overall this was smart and painful, and it led me to read more about India’s State of Emergency. The irony carries a lot of the story (maybe even a little too much for me?), but the free radio as a symbol (of a government using dreams as bait) really stuck. So did that final image of a boy trying to conjure reality out of thin air through sheer will/belief/hope. Sometimes fantasy and delusion really is a survival mechanism.
- The Wounded Man, Abdellah Taïa, translated from French by Frank Stock — 4.25/5 — I’m going to be moved every time by art giving language to a human experience even before you know how to describe or articulate it yourself.
- Forty-Eight Steps, Paxim Mojavezi, translated from Persian by Sara Khalili — 3.5/5 — fave line: "I want all the ice inside me to melt”
- Magnificat, Linnea Axelsson, translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel — 4/5 — the language of the prose was beautiful to me -- dense and strange.
Fave lines:
- An Ambitious Good-Hearted Leftist, Adania Shibli, translated from Arabic by Christopher Stone — 4.25/5 — liked the absurd, funny irony in trying to resist and make a broken system work anyways; it's politically sharp without losing warmth or affection.
- Islands, Aleksandar Hemon — 2.75/5 — innocence is so easily infected, childhood is so porous here. Everything gets in vividly: violence, decay, history, death, even on a sunny vacation by the sea.
- Offside, Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from Spanish by Sarah Booker — 3.25/5 — felt like the chilliness was both the story’s atmosphere and its limitation. It was allegorical and had a fantastic final image of a buried car representing life’s exit route covered over by time and motherhood, but i feel like the story’s cold detached style sometimes kept me at a distance.
- An Unlucky Man, Samanta Schweblin, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell — 4/5 — so much to unpack oh my days. Darkly comic the whole time but the image was chilling of how easily a child’s humiliation and bodily privacy can become secondary to adults and how little bodily autonomy children sometimes have. The stranger guy is all red flags, no matter how the child experiences his attention, and the ambiguity works b/c through the child's perspective we see how easily danger can come from “help,” secrecy, specialness, etc. To me that ending really felt strong: for the child, swallowing his name is like part of a game, but it's also an example of girls being taught/socially conditioned to protect the men whose names should be spoken out loud.
My purely mathematical story-by-story average comes out to ~4/5, but I’m giving the collection 4.5/5 overall because the highs were really high. I discovered a few new favorites, got to read new-to-me stories from some of my favorite authors, and I do feel grateful for all the pieces I maybe wouldn't have gotten to read or wouldn't've found otherwise.
4.5/5
------------
[currently reading] this collection has assembled some of my favorite living authors like they're the Avengers and so far the stories are banger after banger, what. a. roster. 🙌
Tiny story notes as I go:
- Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, Haruki Murakami, translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin — 4.75/5 — so Murakami. absurd, lonely, tender & metaphysical.
- The Illumination of Santiago, Nona Fernández, translated from Spanish by Idra Novey — 4.25/5 — a sharp little electric light miniature, more image than story but still elegant as hell
- Apples, Gunnhild Øyehaug, translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson — 4.5/5 — i'm a sucker for metafiction, and this is a nesting doll of stories using it as an emotional tool. I enjoyed the story for the same reasons I enjoy metafiction -- yes, irony/cleverness can be used to hide from sincerity, but art & form can also reveal genuine feeling.
- My Sad Dead, Mariana Enriquez, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell — 4.75/5 — I knew Enriquez could write a ~600 page horror but now I know she can also deliver a punch in short story form too. A ghost story about fascism beginning with fear and how a society that refuses to protect the vulnerable will be haunted by the people it abandons
- War of the Clowns, Mia Couto, translated from Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker — 4.25/5 — tiny but absolutely vicious political fable that in its two (!) freaking pages says so much about how quickly society sees violence as a spectacle and who profits from all the nonsense and chaos.
- One Minus One, Colm Tóibín — 4.5/5 — so skillfully done. Sometimes I think quiet, restrained, and devastating is harder to pull off but this captured grief as subtraction in a way that's not only losing someone, but also losing the possibility that the relationship could ever be explained, repaired, or made whole. Loved how he works through contrasts: neutral zero vs. emptiness zero, how he sees Texas as an unhaunted blankness vs. Ireland as a place hollowed out by what’s missing. All that restraint somehow made the grief louder.
- The Flower Garden, Mieko Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Hitomi Yoshio — 4.75/5 — probably my favorite so far for the journey it took me on, this was a wild ride -- started as social satire that had me chuckling, then turned into domestic horror about building an identity around something never fully yours.
- Night Women, Edwidge Danticat — 4.75/5 — the starkness of the mother and child’s situation against the lushness of the language made everything ache even more.
- The July War, Rabih Alameddine — 3.75/5 — coming-of-age under war is already terrifying enough but then there’s also contending with the patriarchal rot that starts in the home: the performance of masculinity and adults delivering corrupted and cruel ‘wisdom’ to young boys. Lots of details packed in (narrator’s awkwardness, humor, messiness, diaper hoarding, the father’s hypocrisy, the whole claustrophobic family life, violence, etc), but that gives it lots of human texture to hold onto.
- Cattle Praise Song, Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from French by Melanie Mauthner — 4.75/5 — I’m sensing a pattern of my favorite stories in this collection having gorgeous writing while being quietly devastating. This story prompted me to read more about Rwanda’s history and the genocide. I loved the time spent on the rituals of daily life with the cows; it made the story feel like a beautiful elegy.
- Garments, Tahmima Anam — 4/5 — young women working in a Bangladeshi garment factory try to find protection when being a woman in society leaves them dangerously exposed. Liked the chosen intimacy between women and that the ending was fragile yet hopeful.
- Rotten Stench, Eka Kurniawan, translated from Indonesian by Annie Tucker — 3.5/5 — i liked this, it's like one long breath of horror about how once a society accepts one category of people as killable/disposable, it becomes much easier to accept the next. I wish these political fables about becoming numbed to atrocities and normalization of massacre weren’t as terrifyingly relevant as they are. This was less emotionally tender and less narratively layered than other stories in this collection, but formally it’s doing exactly what it wants to do, and it also made me read more about anti-communist massacres and state violence in Indonesia.
- Amira Who Knows, Rwaa Sonbol, translated from Arabic by Katharine Halls — 4/5 — one solitary, lonely old woman watching over public toilets becomes the keeper of a broken city’s hidden life. Definitely fits this stretch of heavier, bleaker, devastating stories.
- Petite Mort, Zanta Nkumane — 3.25/5 — plot is strong (queerness, grief, a complicated father-son relationship, cultural funeral rituals, the smart ‘little death’ metaphor in the title/story), and I’d read a full novel of this premise, but in short story form it didn’t have the breathing room to keep the writing from being a bit too self-serious/a touch too eager to be admired; the metaphors were clever, sometimes beautiful, but often their polish pulled me out of the grief instead of deeper into it.
- Girl, Jamaica Kincaid — 5/5 — on a technical level to me it’s pretty formally flawless. Reminds me of a dark, absurd, more-layered version of the Barbie monologue but turned into a breathless mother-daughter instruction manual; it flits SO fast (to comedic effect) between practical survival knowledge and inherited, incessant, internalized shame, all adding up into the impossible rules of becoming a woman.
- The Fruit of My Woman, Han Kang, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith -- 5/5 — it was really cool to see the inspiration / seed-form of The Vegetarian. A woman starves for earth, air, and a place to grow, suffocated by marriage and the urban staleness of the city, but the real horror is the husband -- how he loves her most when she no longer speaks and finds her the most beautiful when she becomes something he can contain, water, and consume. Horrifying.
- Vertical Motion, Can Xue, translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping — 4.75/5 — weird little surrealist bug fable that lowkey cracked my brain open. Obsessed with the black soil/yellow sand image: such a good metaphor for existential striving, immigration, revolutions, protests, ancestry, planting trees you may never get to see...basically leaving the world you know for a harsher, more disorienting one where you can’t tell if you’re making progress or just exhausting yourself in place, and still moving upward anyway, a little closer to the light. Made me think too of Han Kang’s “throw light” image in 거울 저편의 겨울 2 from 서랍에 저녁을 넣어 두었다— that even if the light disperses, the act of throwing it still matters. Also made me think of Hwang Jungeun’s One Hundred Shadows, where the shadows always return, but the characters still hold hands, seek out the pockets of light, and keep singing. The short story like the poem and the novel end on the idea that transcendence isn't a destination but more like a condition of endless striving. One must imagine Sisyphus happy, after all.
- You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, Zoë Wicomb — 4/5 — brutal. place is never just place -- South Africa may have enough landmarks to mark directions/geography but apartheid leaves many lost emotionally inside the bleak geography of race, shame, fear, gender, laws.
- Squatting, Diao Dou, translated from Chinese by Brendan O’Kane — 3.5/5 — deliciously absurd bureaucratic satire about authoritarian problem-solving, bleakly funny bc the intellectuals, govt, and regulations are ridiculous, but the logic is horrifyingly familiar
- Sparks, Carol Bensimon, translated from Portuguese by Beth Fowler — 3/5 — awww, soft wistful little road-trip story. I liked the idea of two old friends finally taking the trip they once dreamed about, with the spark between them still there but maybe too delayed or too fragile to become fire. I wish the story was longer! — the narrative 'spark' itself developed just a little more.
- Exhalation, Ted Chiang — 5/5 — a reread for me, but yep, still hits. It really is a miracle that anything exists at all before the universe goes quiet. “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice.”
- The Ugliest Woman in the World, Olga Tokarczuk, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones — 3.5/5 — guess who the real monster is. Very Phantom of the Opera: “it’s in your soul that the true distortion lies.”
- The Good Denis, Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump — 3/5 — psychologically trippy, almost like a ghost story and almost gothic. I really liked the aspects that felt slippery -- the unstable memory and the messy relationship with the mother, all the everyday cruelty, suspicion, judgment of the characters -- that made the world feel three-dimensional quickly, though i wish it had been more even more atmospheric, even more bizarre. Also wish it would've leaned harder into the metaphysical dread! But I liked the central question it's asking -- what does “good” even mean when everyone uses it to explain everything and nothing? Denis’s goodness becomes oppressive because no one can define it except through vague aura (a scent, a thunderbolt, a slow fire), and that vagueness is the horror.
- Frogs, Mo Yan, translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt — 3.75/5 — the symbolism isn't subtle or shy but it feels blunt/more heavy-handed perhaps b/c the shadow of China’s family-planning policies and the violence of its reproductive politics is too morally huge for quiet realism. The strongest part of the writing/translation for me was the whole soundscape of her guilt, I could hear the chorus of mud, cries, croaks, skin, suction.
- On the Occasion of Our Fourth Divorce Anniversary, Lana Bastašić — 4.5/5 — Oh this was a total vibe. It’s so short and definitely has that tragicomic-breakup-musing, confessional, cool-girl thing that could become annoying in the wrong hands, but there’s a jagged self-awareness in the writing where it keeps puncturing its own aesthetic, and the form I think is great for making the flood of memories feel like one rush of association. It was funny and sharp and bruised and intellectual without feeling bloodless.
- Loba Lamar’s Last Kiss, Pedro Lemebel, translated from Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper — 5/5 — I was cry-laughing by the end, and this might be my favorite story in the collection so far. It’s an AIDS deathbed story, so yeah it’s heartbreaking, but it refuses the quiet-tragic voyeurism script often imposed on stories of queer suffering and feels more real and more glittery, campy, obscene, and hilarious and tender and devastating. Loba is a damn force -- vain, hella bossy, annoying, funny, glamorous, and so clearly adored by the queer family taking care of her. She never gets flattened into a sanitized and palatable tragic saint or some cautionary tale or a statistic, she stays herself until the end. The final scene was absolutely outrageous and indecent, but it’s also what made me laugh-cry, especially for the portrait of found family and community care in all its exhausted love and practical devotion. The ending to me is like one last revolt against death’s indignity. The world is cruel, AIDS is cruel, poverty is cruel, death is cruel, and still the locas are arguing over whether the scarf makes her look like Bugs Bunny. That’s humanity, baby.
- The Free Radio, Salman Rushdie — 3/5 — liked this, made me think of Foucault's idea of biopolitics and also Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power and Byung-Chul Han’s idea that power can also be dangerous when it manifests as an offer (with the illusion of freedom) instead of a threat. Here, Rushdie showed how easily hope itself can be turned into a tool of control. Overall this was smart and painful, and it led me to read more about India’s State of Emergency. The irony carries a lot of the story (maybe even a little too much for me?), but the free radio as a symbol (of a government using dreams as bait) really stuck. So did that final image of a boy trying to conjure reality out of thin air through sheer will/belief/hope. Sometimes fantasy and delusion really is a survival mechanism.
- The Wounded Man, Abdellah Taïa, translated from French by Frank Stock — 4.25/5 — I’m going to be moved every time by art giving language to a human experience even before you know how to describe or articulate it yourself.
- Forty-Eight Steps, Paxim Mojavezi, translated from Persian by Sara Khalili — 3.5/5 — fave line: "I want all the ice inside me to melt”
- Magnificat, Linnea Axelsson, translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel — 4/5 — the language of the prose was beautiful to me -- dense and strange.
Fave lines:
-"Slitting open membranes. Long silvery white strands of fur sticking to the blood on my fingers."
-“It’s the beauty and magnitude of the gift that makes me feel I can’t pass it on to my friend.”
- An Ambitious Good-Hearted Leftist, Adania Shibli, translated from Arabic by Christopher Stone — 4.25/5 — liked the absurd, funny irony in trying to resist and make a broken system work anyways; it's politically sharp without losing warmth or affection.
- Islands, Aleksandar Hemon — 2.75/5 — innocence is so easily infected, childhood is so porous here. Everything gets in vividly: violence, decay, history, death, even on a sunny vacation by the sea.
- Offside, Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from Spanish by Sarah Booker — 3.25/5 — felt like the chilliness was both the story’s atmosphere and its limitation. It was allegorical and had a fantastic final image of a buried car representing life’s exit route covered over by time and motherhood, but i feel like the story’s cold detached style sometimes kept me at a distance.
- An Unlucky Man, Samanta Schweblin, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell — 4/5 — so much to unpack oh my days. Darkly comic the whole time but the image was chilling of how easily a child’s humiliation and bodily privacy can become secondary to adults and how little bodily autonomy children sometimes have. The stranger guy is all red flags, no matter how the child experiences his attention, and the ambiguity works b/c through the child's perspective we see how easily danger can come from “help,” secrecy, specialness, etc. To me that ending really felt strong: for the child, swallowing his name is like part of a game, but it's also an example of girls being taught/socially conditioned to protect the men whose names should be spoken out loud.
June 15, 2026
34 stories in a wide range of literary (mostly translated) tones; on grief, loneliness, one’s memory, human connection, selfhood or identity told in a backdrop of culture, familial dynamics, social issues, political and everyday lives. Loved the diversity of its style in way the authors exploring their themes— quite minimalist and having hue of quietness with less twists or action, mostly melancholic and carrying that lump of unsettling or ambiguous feel on the after-read.
Fairly loved most of the stories esp ones that I have read previously like Super Frog Saves Tokyo (Haruki Murakami)— of reality vs imagination, on fear and one’s sense of purpose tale, My Sad Dead (Mariana Enriquez)— most fav for its gothic horror tone and way Enriquez explored its grief and trauma theme, The Free Radio (Salman Rushdie)— dramatic, satirical and the most memorable read to me and The Fruit Of My Woman (Han Kang)— a surreal symbolic tale of how a woman transformed into a plant.
That fractured and regret exploration in The Flower Garden (Mieko Kawakami) quite inviting and I enjoyed Forty-Eight Steps (Paxima Mojavezi) for its trapped in routine and midlife crisis tale as well Petite Mort (Zanta Nkumane) which very queer and explicit yet delved into a compelling grief and tragic familial relation theme. Nothing too happy ending in most of the stories, bittersweet and can be bit mundane too at times.
An overall great collection if you’re into a character over plot premise, love short writing or translated works and enjoy emotionally nuanced writings. I like that I personally get to discover new authors through this read.
**thank you Times Reads for the gifted review copy!
Fairly loved most of the stories esp ones that I have read previously like Super Frog Saves Tokyo (Haruki Murakami)— of reality vs imagination, on fear and one’s sense of purpose tale, My Sad Dead (Mariana Enriquez)— most fav for its gothic horror tone and way Enriquez explored its grief and trauma theme, The Free Radio (Salman Rushdie)— dramatic, satirical and the most memorable read to me and The Fruit Of My Woman (Han Kang)— a surreal symbolic tale of how a woman transformed into a plant.
That fractured and regret exploration in The Flower Garden (Mieko Kawakami) quite inviting and I enjoyed Forty-Eight Steps (Paxima Mojavezi) for its trapped in routine and midlife crisis tale as well Petite Mort (Zanta Nkumane) which very queer and explicit yet delved into a compelling grief and tragic familial relation theme. Nothing too happy ending in most of the stories, bittersweet and can be bit mundane too at times.
An overall great collection if you’re into a character over plot premise, love short writing or translated works and enjoy emotionally nuanced writings. I like that I personally get to discover new authors through this read.
**thank you Times Reads for the gifted review copy!
June 27, 2026
34 kratkih zgodb sodobnih avtorjev s celega sveta, dobri dve tretjini zgodb so prevodu v angleščino. Skoraj polovico avtorjev sem brala že prej (Lana Bastašić, Adania Shibli, Samanta Schweblin, Jamaica Kincaid, Colm Tòibìn, Haruki Murakami, da jih naštejem vsaj nekaj), ostali so bili zame novi, ampak zdaj si želim brati več njihovih del. To so npr. bosansko/srbsko/ameriški Aleksandar Hemon, čilenska Nona Fernández, haitijška Edwidge Danticat.
Zgodbe nimajo jasno definirane rdeče niti, a v veliko njih igra spomin in spominjanje veliko vlogo.
Zgodbe nimajo jasno definirane rdeče niti, a v veliko njih igra spomin in spominjanje veliko vlogo.
April 14, 2026
it feels like travelling around the world and tasting each country’s cultural foods
Currently Reading
April 14, 20264.14. 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.
January 5, 2026
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.
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.
May 20, 2026
Apart from a few stories, this is a compilation of all that I despise about modern writing.
June 13, 2026
So many frogs
July 5, 2026
3.5⭐
The Penguin Book of the International Short Story aims to compile a diverse range of short stories set in different countries around the world, contemporary stories to provide "a glance at what is happening around this world of ours". The writers of these works include both well-known names and newer voices, making this an ideal place to discover some new authors whose other books you might want to read.
The stories can generally be divided into the more realistic ones versus the ones that tend towards surrealism (some of them don't just tend towards surrealism, they're the very definition of the word). I strongly preferred the former type for the way in which they subtly dissected human nature and the state of the world at the moment. These were some of my favourites:
- My Sad Dead
- Cattle Praise Song
- Garments
- Rotten Stench
- Amira Who Knows
- Squatting
- Exhalation
- The Ugliest Woman in the World
- The Free Radio
- An Ambitious Good-Hearted Leftist
- Islands
There were a few that would have made it to this list if not for the way they concluded; The Good Denis and The Flower Garden were both captivating stories but the endings were too out there whereas the final part of The July War felt unnecessary and crass. There were a few other stories I found too explicit, a few were boring and some (like Han Kang's The Fruit of My Woman) were too bizarre. Some of the stories in this book made me realise that even though I don't mind a certain surreal quality in fiction, there is a point beyond which it doesn't work for me.
Overall, though I didn't love every part of the book, it did introduce me to some new authors I want to read more from.
The Penguin Book of the International Short Story aims to compile a diverse range of short stories set in different countries around the world, contemporary stories to provide "a glance at what is happening around this world of ours". The writers of these works include both well-known names and newer voices, making this an ideal place to discover some new authors whose other books you might want to read.
The stories can generally be divided into the more realistic ones versus the ones that tend towards surrealism (some of them don't just tend towards surrealism, they're the very definition of the word). I strongly preferred the former type for the way in which they subtly dissected human nature and the state of the world at the moment. These were some of my favourites:
- My Sad Dead
- Cattle Praise Song
- Garments
- Rotten Stench
- Amira Who Knows
- Squatting
- Exhalation
- The Ugliest Woman in the World
- The Free Radio
- An Ambitious Good-Hearted Leftist
- Islands
There were a few that would have made it to this list if not for the way they concluded; The Good Denis and The Flower Garden were both captivating stories but the endings were too out there whereas the final part of The July War felt unnecessary and crass. There were a few other stories I found too explicit, a few were boring and some (like Han Kang's The Fruit of My Woman) were too bizarre. Some of the stories in this book made me realise that even though I don't mind a certain surreal quality in fiction, there is a point beyond which it doesn't work for me.
Overall, though I didn't love every part of the book, it did introduce me to some new authors I want to read more from.
Read
May 30, 2026I loved "Apples." I know that writing about writing doesn't always work, but this one did for me.
"The Flower Garden" is haunting, very cottagecore meets horror.
As someone who loved "An Unnecessary Woman," reading "The July War" was a bit of a shock! But a welcome one, it's good to see writers show different sides of themselves, especially for urgent topics in changing times.
"Exhalation" does nothing for me, sorry. So bland.
"The Ugliest Woman in the World" is unsettling.
"The Wounded Man" is intense, my god.
"An Unlucky Man" -- Isn't it such a sibling response that, even when you're worried about your baby sister for swallowing bleach, you're still kind of annoyed at them for being the center of attention? The rest of the story is even more unsettling.
"The Flower Garden" is haunting, very cottagecore meets horror.
As someone who loved "An Unnecessary Woman," reading "The July War" was a bit of a shock! But a welcome one, it's good to see writers show different sides of themselves, especially for urgent topics in changing times.
"Exhalation" does nothing for me, sorry. So bland.
"The Ugliest Woman in the World" is unsettling.
"The Wounded Man" is intense, my god.
"An Unlucky Man" -- Isn't it such a sibling response that, even when you're worried about your baby sister for swallowing bleach, you're still kind of annoyed at them for being the center of attention? The rest of the story is even more unsettling.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
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.
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.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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.
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.
June 15, 2026
The Penguin Book of the International Short Story is a collection of 34 short stories from all over the globe, featuring a massive lineup of writers like Murakami, Han Kang, Eka Kurniawan, Salman Rushdie, Adania Shibli, and tons more. Put together and edited by Rabih Alameddine and John Freeman, this book really makes you think and takes you on a journey through a bunch of different genres.
The 3️⃣ Things:
🎭📖 𝑨 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒎𝒊𝒙 𝒐𝒇 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆𝒔.
Of course, I can’t cram everything about this book into just three points, but I personally loved the stories in here. In The Fruit of My Woman by Han Kang, you can see the withdrawal in marriage & patriarchy. There’s plenty of satirical politics in Eka Kurniawan’s Rotten Stench, Mia Couto’s War of The Clowns, and Diao Dou’s Squatting. You get a bit of sci-fi in Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, plus mystery and psychological vibes in Mieko Kawakami’s The Flower Garden and Mariana Enriquez’s My Sad Dead. It even features some pretty bizarre stories, like Haruki Murakami’s Super Frog Saves Tokyo.
💗𝑴𝒚 𝑷𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑭𝒂𝒗𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒔
If you asked me to choose, I’d go with:
▪️Super Frog Saves Tokyo – Haruki Murakami
▪️My Sad Dead – Mariana Enriquez
▪️One Minus One – Colm Toibin (must read)
▪️The Flower Garden – Mieko Kawakami (must read)
▪️The July War – Rabih Alameddine
▪️Rotten Stench – Eka Kurniawan(must read)
▪️Petit Mort – Zanta Nkumane (must read)
▪️The Fruit of My Woman – Han Kang (The Vegetarian predecessor)
▪️The Ugliest Woman In The World – Olga Tokarczuk (must read)
▪️The Free Radio – Salman Rushdie
▪️ The Wounded Man – Abdellah Taha
▪️An Ambitious Good-hearted Leftist – Adania Shibli
🌎6 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒔 & 𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝒊𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔.
I love how most of these short stories lean into historical fiction & it honestly felt like I was traveling the world. When a book packs famous authors, fresh new voices, and legendary literary icons all in one place, it’s a total must-have. Thank you @putrifariza and @times.reads for this precious book. ✨🫰🏻
🖨️: @penguinpress
📖: 428
⭐: 4/5
The 3️⃣ Things:
🎭📖 𝑨 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒎𝒊𝒙 𝒐𝒇 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆𝒔.
Of course, I can’t cram everything about this book into just three points, but I personally loved the stories in here. In The Fruit of My Woman by Han Kang, you can see the withdrawal in marriage & patriarchy. There’s plenty of satirical politics in Eka Kurniawan’s Rotten Stench, Mia Couto’s War of The Clowns, and Diao Dou’s Squatting. You get a bit of sci-fi in Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, plus mystery and psychological vibes in Mieko Kawakami’s The Flower Garden and Mariana Enriquez’s My Sad Dead. It even features some pretty bizarre stories, like Haruki Murakami’s Super Frog Saves Tokyo.
💗𝑴𝒚 𝑷𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑭𝒂𝒗𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒔
If you asked me to choose, I’d go with:
▪️Super Frog Saves Tokyo – Haruki Murakami
▪️My Sad Dead – Mariana Enriquez
▪️One Minus One – Colm Toibin (must read)
▪️The Flower Garden – Mieko Kawakami (must read)
▪️The July War – Rabih Alameddine
▪️Rotten Stench – Eka Kurniawan(must read)
▪️Petit Mort – Zanta Nkumane (must read)
▪️The Fruit of My Woman – Han Kang (The Vegetarian predecessor)
▪️The Ugliest Woman In The World – Olga Tokarczuk (must read)
▪️The Free Radio – Salman Rushdie
▪️ The Wounded Man – Abdellah Taha
▪️An Ambitious Good-hearted Leftist – Adania Shibli
🌎6 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒔 & 𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝒊𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔.
I love how most of these short stories lean into historical fiction & it honestly felt like I was traveling the world. When a book packs famous authors, fresh new voices, and legendary literary icons all in one place, it’s a total must-have. Thank you @putrifariza and @times.reads for this precious book. ✨🫰🏻
🖨️: @penguinpress
📖: 428
⭐: 4/5
March 10, 2026
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.
Many thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for the e-ARC.
June 24, 2026
I love anthologies, and I listened to this on audio, which tends to make me feel more emotionally moved by a book, from hearing stories told aloud by all these different narrator. What a treat! First of all, I loved the roster of authors chosen. It felt so star-studded. I like how the book opened with a story by Haruki Murakami for a very strong start, and then somewhere in the middle they placed this excellent and haunting piece by Han Kang. Many of the authors were being shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize as I was reading, so it was nice to be introduced to their shorter work as a sampler to seeing if I'd like their novels. I like noticing editorial decisions like that, and also thinking of why each story was chosen. The stories were generally high quality, and I think as expected, skewed more political than average, which i felt was appropriate for the collection. I loved the defiance of some of the very sexual stories! There was one by a Nigerian author that really stood out, and was also read so well by the narrator.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
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.
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.
May 3, 2026
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.
Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for access to the ARC.
April 18, 2026
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
My favorites below:
- Superfrog Saves Tokyo by Haruki Murakami
- The July War by Rabih Alameddine
- Garments by Tahmima Anam
June 10, 2026
An impressive feat of collaborating with that many authors and some even translated. I guess these short stories give you an introduction to the authors whom you are yet to read. The stories some I liked, some was mid and some was weird. Overall, interesting compilation, and I travelled everywhere around the world with this book.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
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.
May 10, 2026
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)
(surprisingly, 2 stories in this collection i've actually read before)
April 18, 2026
LOOOOOOOOVED the concept of this book we should have one like that every year
June 7, 2026
Lots of interesting short stories
June 22, 2026
what a showstopper. i hate you, penguin, but you can curate the shit out of some short stories.
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