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FLASH
FICTION
INTERNATIONAL
Very Short Stories
from Around the World
EDITED BY
JAMES THOMAS
ROBERT SHAPARD
CHRISTOPHER MERRILL
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
New York London
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Story, Victorious
Etgar Keret
ISRAEL
Please Hold Me the Forgotten Way
H. J. Shepard
UNITED STATES
Prisoner of War
Muna Fadhil
IRAQ
The Waterfall
Alberto Chimal
MEXICO
Eating Bone
Shabnam Nadiya
BANGLADESH
Esse
Czesław Miłosz
POLAND
The Gospel of Guy No-Horse
Natalie Diaz
UNITED STATES
Man Carrying Books
Linh Dinh
VIETNAM/UNITED STATES
The Attraction of Asphalt
Stefani Nellen
GERMANY
Barnes
Edmundo Paz Soldán
BOLIVIA
A Sailor
Randa Jarrar
PALESTINE/UNITED STATES
The Voice of the Enemy
Juan Villoro
MEXICO
An Imperial Message
Franz Kafka
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Trilogy
Antonio López Ortega
VENEZUELA
Shattered
Shirani Rajapakse
SRI LANKA
Bruise
Stuart Dybek
UNITED STATES
Love
Edgar Omar Avilés
MEXICO
First Impressions
Ricardo Sumalavia
PERU
Fire. Water.
Avital Gad-Cykman
ISRAEL/BRAZIL
The Snake
Eric Rugara
KENYA
An Ugly Man
Marcela Fuentes
UNITED STATES
The Lord of the Flies
Marco Denevi
ARGENTINA
Honor Killing
Kim Young-ha
SOUTH KOREA
Signs
Bess Winter
CANADA/UNITED STATES
Idolatry
Sherman Alexie
UNITED STATES
Lost
Alberto Fuguet
CHILE
The Extravagant Behavior of the Naked Woman
Josefina Estrada
MEXICO
Sleeping Habit
Yasunari Kawabata
JAPAN
Night Drive
Rubem Fonseca
BRAZIL
Truthful Lies
Frankie McMillan
NEW ZEALAND
The Tiger
Mohibullah Zegham
AFGHANISTAN
Everyone Out of the Pool
Robert Lopez
UNITED STATES
The Baby
María Negroni
ARGENTINA
Aglaglagl
Bruce Holland Rogers
UNITED STATES
The Five New Sons
Zakaria Tamer
SYRIA
The Vending Machine at the End of the World
Josephine Rowe
AUSTRALIA
The Past
Juan Carlos Botero
COLOMBIA
Everyone Does Integral Calculus
Kuzhali Manickavel
INDIA
Little Girls
Tara Laskowski
UNITED STATES
Ronggeng
Yin Ee Kiong
MALAYSIA/INDONESIA
Butterfly Forever
Chen Qiyou
TAIWAN
Labyrinth
Juan José Barrientos
MEXICO
The Light Eater
Kirsty Logan
SCOTLAND
Late for Dinner
Jim Crace
ENGLAND
Volcanic Fireflies
Mónica Lavín
MEXICO
Insomnia
Virgilio Piñera
CUBA
Four Hands
Margarita Meklina
RUSSIA
Engkanto
Peter Zaragoza Mayshle
THE PHILIPPINES
Without a Net
Ana María Shua
ARGENTINA
Appointment in Samarra
W. Somerset Maugham
ENGLAND
The Hawk
Brian Doyle
UNITED STATES
The Egg Pyramid
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
IRELAND
An Ouroboric Novel
Giorgio Manganelli
ITALY
That Color
Jon McGregor
ENGLAND
Like a Family
Meg Pokrass
UNITED STATES
The Madonna Round Evelina’s
Pierre J. Mejlak
MALTA
My Brother at the Canadian Border
Sholeh Wolpé
IRAN/UNITED STATES
Skull of a Sheep
James Claffey
IRELAND
Arm, Clean Off
Cate McGowan
UNITED STATES
Finished Symphony
Augusto Monterroso
GUATEMALA
When a Dollar Was a Big Deal
Ari Behn
NORWAY
Amerika Street
Lili Potpara
SLOVENIA
Joke
Giannis Palavos
GREECE
Heavy Bones
Tania Hershman
ISRAEL/ENGLAND
Dream #6
Naguib Mahfouz
EGYPT
Daniela
Roberto Bolaño
CHILE
Sovetskoye Shampanskoye
Berit Ellingsen
NORWAY
Consuming the View
Luigi Malerba
ITALY
Reunion
Edward Mullany
UNITED STATES
The Interpreter for the Tribunal
Tony Eprile
SOUTH AFRICA
The Gutter
Ethel Rohan
IRELAND
Three-Second Angels
Judd Hampton
CANADA
The Lament of Hester Muponda
Petina Gappah
ZIMBABWE
Farewell, I Love You, and Goodbye
James Tate
UNITED STATES
The Most Beautiful Girl
Peter Stamm
SWITZERLAND
The Ache
Elena Bossi
ARGENTINA
The Young Widow
Petronius
ANCIENT ROME
Fun House
Robert Scotellaro
UNITED STATES
Squeegee
James Norcliffe
NEW ZEALAND
From the Roaches’ Perspective
Qiu Xiaolong
CHINA
Not Far from the Tree
Karina M. Szczurek
SOUTH AFRICA
Family
Jensen Beach
UNITED STATES
Honey
Antonio Ungar
Hotel Room
Juan José Saer
ARGENTINA
The Nihilist
Ron Carlson
UNITED STATES
Stories
Natasza Goerke
POLAND
Flash Theory
Flash Theory Sources
Contributor Notes
Credits
We could not have made this book without our faithful associate editors, who did a wonderful job of reading, rating, and commenting on countless flash fictions from around the world: Margaret Bentley, Michelle Elvy, D. Seth Horton, P. J. Jones, Tara Laskowski, David Lemming, Michael Malone, Kristina Reardon, Denise Robinow, Ethel Rohan, Andy Root, Revé Shapard, and Michelle Shin.
INTRODUCTION
WHAT’S FLASH FICTION called in other countries? In Latin America it may be a micro, in Denmark a kortprosa, in Bulgaria a mikro razkaz. Some are only a paragraph long, others two pages (they’re all very short stories, some very, very short), but such measurements don’t tell us much. We prefer metaphors like Luisa Valenzuela’s:
I usually compare the novel to a mammal, be it wild as a tiger or tame as a cow; the short story to a bird or a fish; the micro story to an insect (iridescent in the best cases).
These iridescent insects have been gaining in popularity for more than two decades. In the United States, anthologies, collections, and chapbooks have sold about a million copies. Not as many as some bestsellers, but notable nonetheless. Professional actors have read them to live audiences on Broadway, their performances taped for airing on National Public Radio. In Switzerland, Spain, and Argentina, minificción world congresses have been held; in Thailand and the Philippines, flash world seminars have met. A national Flash Fiction Academy has been established in China. Most recently, National Flash Fiction Days were declared in Great Britain and New Zealand.
Having had something to do with the popularity of flash ourselves, in publishing the first Flash Fiction, in 1992, then Flash Fiction Forward, in 2005, naturally we’ve been eager to bring you a new book of the best very short stories in the world. But we needed the right opportunity. A few years ago, collecting Latin American stories for Sudden Fiction Latino, we spent more than a year searching libraries, bookstores, and the Internet, but that was a project on a different scale. All six continents seemed out of reach, until we were joined by Christopher Merrill, who is director of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and a widely published poet and writer of flash fiction.
Chris convinced us to see not just through American eyes but to widen our vision. When we launched the project, corresponding with hundreds of writers and translators around the world, we asked them for ideas—which they generously sent, with further contacts.
Flash fiction began to pour in, most recognizable as stories, though some were highly unusual or fantastic. Flash has always been a form of experiment, of possibility. Here were stories based on musical or mathematical forms, a novel in a paragraph, a scientific report of volcanic fireflies that proliferate in nightclubs. We were open to anything, including contemporary Australian Aboriginal tales (they were short enough, but seemed made to be chanted—were they flash?) and ancient Mayan rituals (at least the translations were new). And those Sumerian clay tablets, vivid with laughter and jealousy and the poetry of domestic life? They might be accepted as a flash today by an Internet magazine. They weren’t for us, yet reminded us that flash wasn’t born on the Internet.
Yet we can’t deny that flash has flourished far more quickly and widely, has become far more a part of the world by means of the Internet than we ever imagined. As one editor of Chinese flash fiction has noted, being “device-independent and compatible with today’s technology” has allowed flash a “freedom from censorship not enjoyed in other media.” Beyond the United States, family or village stories may include more extended family, and be more satirical; intimate or personal stories edge toward philosophy or the world of ideas. As for the idea of flash itself, the rest of the world seems more interested in talking about the nature, purpose, and meaning of flash, while in the United States the focus has been on the creative and practical, that is, how to write it.
But why talk about flash at all? For the same reason we talk about any art—to enjoy, to share, to understand ourselves and our culture—and because ideas are powerful. We began to ask authors and translators for their favorite brief quote about flash, and replies came from around the world. Many of them cited American thinkers and authors—they had been reading us as well. In fact a world conversation has been going on related to flash. We offer some of it at the end of this anthology in a section called “Flash Theory”—big ideas in tiny spaces, as short as a sentence (whether deep, outrageous, humorous, or in the best cases iridescent).
Finally, the question a reader of any anthology should ask, Why these particular stories? We selected the best, not trying for the widest representation, and giving hardly any thought to subject matter. Since “the best,” in literature, is always to some degree subjective, we recruited a community to help us keep our view from being too narrow, a dozen associate readers different in genders, ages, and walks of life—mostly writers who were also something else—baker, lawyer, vice president of a university, honkytonk owner. All of them loved to read. We sent batches of flash fiction to each other and kept in touch by email—from Bali to Hawaii to Utah to Texas to Ohio to Virginia to Connecticut—with calculated ratings and unruly comments. We agreed to include a few classics because we liked that they extend and deepen our idea of flash, and because they are among the best flashes ever.
At last, ten thousand stories later, our deadline at hand, we made our final cuts, and herein offer you eighty-six of the world’s best very short stories—known in Portuguese as minicontos, in German as Kürzestgeschichten, in Irish as splancfhicsin, in Italian as microstorias . . . and in English as flash fiction.
As always, our thanks to Amy Cherry, our editor at W. W. Norton, and our agent, Nat Sobel, of Sobel Weber Associates in New York.
We also wish to thank all the individuals and organizations who generously helped in our research for this book—it would be impossible to name them all. But some deserve special recognition: the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), including Lisa DuPree, Hugh Ferrer, and Ashley Davidson; former IWP participants Alvin Pang, in Singapore, and Kyoko Yoshida, in Tokyo; also at the University of Iowa, Jennifer Feely in Chinese Literature, and Nataša Durovicová of the MFA program in Literary Translation. At the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Charles Hatfield, George Henson, and María Rosa Suárez. For the American Literary Translators Association, Gary Racz and Russell Valentino. At the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Organisation, Jane Camens. Susan Bernofsky, Director of Literary Translation at Columbia University. We also want to thank the Geyers, the staff of the Olive Kettering Library at Antioch College, and the staff on the Special Collections Floor, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin. And, not least, our permissions person, Margaret Gorenstein, who is the best.
FLASH
FICTION
INTERNATIONAL
ISRAEL
The Story, Victorious
Etgar Keret
THIS STORY IS the best story in the book. More than that, this story is the best story in the world. And we weren’t the ones to come to that conclusion. It was also reached by a unanimous team of dozens of unaffiliated experts who—employing strict laboratory standards—measured it against a representative sampling taken from world literature. This story is a unique Israeli innovation. And I bet you’re asking yourselves, how is it that we (tiny little Israel) composed it, and not the Americans? What you should know is that the Americans are asking themselves the same thing. And more than a few of the bigwigs in American publishing stand to lose their jobs because they didn’t have that answer at the ready while it still mattered.
Just as our army is the best army in the w
orld—same with this story. We’re talking here about an opening so innovative that it’s protected by registered patent. And where is this patent registered? That’s the thing, it’s registered in the story itself! This story’s got no shtick to it, no trick to it, no touchy-feely bits. It’s forged from a single block, an amalgam of deep insights and aluminum. It won’t rust, it won’t bust, but it may wander. It’s supercontemporary, and timelessly literary. Let History be the judge! And by the way, according to many fine folk, judgment’s been passed—and our story came up aces.
“What’s so special about this story?” people ask out of innocence or ignorance (depending on who’s asking). “What’s it got that isn’t in Chekhov or Kafka or I-don’t-know-who?” The answer to that question is long and complicated. Longer than the story itself, but less complex. Because there’s nothing more intricate than this story. Nevertheless, we attempt to answer by example. In contrast to works by Chekhov and Kafka, at the end of this story, one lucky winner—randomly selected from among all the correct readers—will receive a brand-new Mazda Lantis with a metallic gray finish. And from among the incorrect readers, one special someone will be selected to receive another car, cheaper, but no less impressive in its metallic grayness so that he or she shouldn’t feel bad. Because this story isn’t here to condescend. It’s here so that you’ll feel good. What’s that saying printed on the place mats at the diner near your house? ENJOYED YOURSELF—TELL YOUR FRIENDS! DIDN’T ENJOY YOURSELF—TELL US! Or, in this case—report it to the story. Because this story doesn’t just tell, it also listens. Its ears, as they say, are attuned to every stirring of the public’s heart. And when the public has had enough and calls for someone to put an end to it, this story won’t drag its feet or grab hold of the edges of the altar. It will, simply, stop.
Translated by Nathan Englander
The Story, Victorious, II
But if one day, out of nostalgia, you suddenly want the story back, it will always be happy to oblige.
UNITED STATES
Please Hold Me
the Forgotten Way
H. J. Shepard
HIS HAIR WAS dark and soft and curled a little because it was getting long. He must have thought it made him look too pretty. He disliked anything that made him attractive. He asked her to shave it. She liked the hair. She imagined touching it with her fingers and coming away with the sweet dark smell of his scalp on her hands. He left his wool hat at her house one night and she had slept with it next to her face. She hated giving it back, and crawled around her blankets at night trying to catch his smell as it disappeared.