Top Ten Short Stories, The - European

The top 10 short stories of all time written by European authors. Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. The short story in Europe has a long and illustrious career yet is often unjustly neglected after a quick scan of de Maupassant and one or two others. Across its seemingly endless cultures that enrich themselves across the canvas of time many other gems are apparent. In this volume we bring some of their bountiful harvest to your ears. 1 - The Top 10 - The European Short Story - An Introduction 2 - Silence by Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev 3 - The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov 4 - Youth by Joseph Conrad 5 - The Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac 6 - The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant 7 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol 8 - The Dead by James Joyce 9 - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka 10 - The Return of Martin Guerre by Alexander Dumas 11 - Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson