I glanced at the wreath against the tombstone and was amazed to read my own name on it: TO MY SECOND MOTHER—FROM KAREL HRABĚ.In our family there had never been anybody by that name.My father, Abraham…

“Parting,” first published in Hebrew in 1914, revolves around the biblical injunction (and the Jewish custom) that a man must marry and support his brother’s widow. However, in later…

“Here you are, which do you want: lemon-yellow or rose-pink?”He had bought two ice creams and with a sad look on his face was offering them to her so she could choose. The woman at the cart…

In the Dona Berta garden, there’s a bench. The only one left. All the others have been torn up, turned into loose planks bound for firewood. On this last remaining bench there lives an old man.…

Much in the same way that for thirty years he's been incapable of breaking the rules, today he just doesn't see himself having the heart to comply with them.

“Are you sure you aren't coming swimming with me?” he asked me while he was entering the cold water on the lakeside gravel.“You know I'm not . . . I don't like swimming,”…

IWhen the plane has almost come to rest, he sees an angel. The angel is sitting right at the back of the small baggage train on its way across the runway. A young man. Or a woman? Longish hair. His eyes.…

The day, along with Ismael, was dying. Under the blanket his still young body shuddered, the body of a man whose life had not been very productive. At his side, his wife Isaura, also still young, attended…

There was a time when my only passions were poverty and rain. Now I feel the purity of limits and my passion would not exist were I to know its name. * * * I remember the chill of dawn, the circles of…

The ad in the “male seeking male” section said: I'm so alone. Roberto. (91) 3077670. and was in among others listing predictable obscenities and a series of oral necessities. Page 43.…