The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, 1945-1985

The Art of the Tale Introduction
Chinua, Achebe,Nigeria
The Sacrificial Egg

Ilse Aichinger, Austria
The Bound Man

Vasily Aksenov, Russia
Little Whale,Varnisher of Reality

Margaret Atwood, Canada
Hair Jewellery

Ingeborg Bachmann, Austria
Everything

James Baldwin, United States
Going to Meet the Man

Russell Banks, United States
The Child Screams and Looks Back at You

Donald Barthelme, United States
Cortés and Montezuma

Ann Beattie, United States
Jacklighting

Samuel Beckett, Ireland
First Love

Heinrich Böll, Germany
Action Will Be Taken

Wolfgang Borchert, Germany
Do Stay, Giraffe

Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina
The Aleph

Tadeusz Borowski, Poland
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Abdeslam Boulaich, Morocco
Cowardice

Paul Bowles, United States
A Distant Episode

T. Coraghessan Boyle, United States
Greasy Lake

Harold Brodkey, United States
Ceil

Dino Buzzati, Italy
Seven Floors

Italo Calvino, Italy
The Adventure of a Traveler

Albert Camus, France
The Adulterous Woman

Truman Capote, United States
Children on Their Birthdays

Raymond Carver, United States
Fat

John Cheever, United States
The Country Husband

Robert Coover, United States
Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl

Julio Cortázar, Argentina
Bestiary

Guy Davenport, United States
The Haile Selassie Funeral Train

Isak Dinesen, Denmark
The Cloak

E. L. Doctorow, United States
The Hunter

Stanley Elkin United States
I Look Out for Ed Wolfe

Richard Ford, United States
Communist

Carlos Fuentes, Mexico
The Doll Queen

Mavis Gallant, Canada
The Chosen Husband

William Gass, United States
Order of Insects

Natalia Ginzburg, Italy
The Mother

Nadine Gordimer, South Africa
The Life of the Imagination

Graham Greene, England
Two Gentle People

Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Germany
Why I Transformed Myself into a Nightingale

Yasunari Kawabata, Japan
One Arm

Milan Kundera, Czechoslovakia
Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead

Tommaso Landolfi, Italy
Gogol's Wife

Doris Lessing, England
The Habit of Loving

Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru
The Challenge

Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt
The Conjurer Made Off with the Dish

Bernard Malamud, United States
The Last Mohican

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia
Eyes of a Blue Dog

William Maxwell, United States
The Pilgrimage

Ian McEwan, England
First Love, Last Rites

Leonard Michaels, United States
The Deal

Yukio Mishima, Japan
Patriotism

Alberto Moravia, Italy
Jewellery

Mohammed Mrabet, Morocco
Doctor Safi

Vladimir Nabokov, Russia
Spring in Fialta

R. K. Narayan, India
Naga

Joyce Carol Oates, United States
The Tryst

Edna O'Brien, Ireland
Sister Imelda

Flannery O'Connor, United States
The Artificial Nigger

Frank O'Connor, Ireland
A Set of Variations on a Borrowed Theme

Amos Oz, Israel
Nomad and Viper

Cynthia Ozick, United States
The Suitcase

Grace Paley, United States
The Contest

Cesare Pavese, Italy
Suicides

V. S. Pritchett, England
The Saint

James Purdy, United States
Eventide

Alain Robbe-Grillet, France
The Replacement

Mercè Rodoreda, Spain
Rain

Leon Rooke, Canada
In the Garden

Juan Rulfo, Mexico
Talpa

Nathalie Sarraute, France
XXII

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Poland
Henne Fire

Susan Sontag, United States
Unguided Tour

Jean Stafford, United States
Children Are Bored on Sunday

Peter Taylor, United States
A Friend and Protector

Michael Tournier, France
Death and the Maiden

William Trevor, Ireland
Beyond the Pale

John Updike, United States
Separating

Luisa Valenzuela, Argentina
I'm Your Horse in the Night

Eudora Welty, United States
No Place For You, My Love

Patrick White, Australia
Five-Twenty

Tobias Wolff, United States
Hunters in the Snow

Richard Wright, United States
Big Black Good Man

Richard Yates, United States
The Best of Everything

Biographical Notes

Daniel Halpern is the author of eight collections of poetry, and has received numerous grants and awards (including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the 1993 PEN Publisher Citation). For twenty-five years he edited the literary magazine Antaeus. He is currently Editorial Director of The Ecco Press/HarperCollins and divides his time between Princeton, New Jersey and New York City.