Read Diary of a Madman

A St Petersburg copying clerk saves for months for a new coat and is robbed of it on the first night he wears it.

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

An angel lands face-down in a courtyard after a storm, and the village starts charging admission to look at him.

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.