Read Bartleby, the Scrivener

She sells her hair to buy him a chain for his watch; he sells the watch to buy her combs for her hair.

Melville's obsessive hunt for the white whale (1851).

The twelve Strand stories, A Scandal in Bohemia to The Copper Beeches.

Ten young Florentines tell a hundred stories while the plague rages; the first modern prose.

Scheherazade keeps herself alive with Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba, a story a night.

The Lady with the Dog, Ward No. 6 and the rest; the short story as we know it.

Bruno Schulz's Drohobycz turned into myth; the stories a Gestapo officer's bullet ended.

The Library of Babel, the Garden of Forking Paths and Pierre Menard; Borges in seventeen stories.