Short fiction forces writers to exercise economy. Guy de Maupassant’s novels are worth reading, but few would dispute the claim that his best work appears in his stories.

One year ago, Congress defunded public media. Now that we're 100% community funded, please become a sustaining member or increase your existing membership today. Listen 0:00 In 1975, the year I turned ...

My wife saw a plate of cupcakes on Instagram and freaked out. It was our first week of social distancing, and to her, the little cakes, covered in promiscuous sprinkles, seemed far too close together ...

The Universal Story Generator exists. He lived in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, and Sandra Smith’s fine new selection and translation of his stories has just been published. The ...

Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Until they teach an unfortunate lesson about superficiality. Guy de Maupassant's short story, "The Necklace," is read by Fireside Al. Mathilde Loisel lives a simple ...

Envy comes easily. Nevertheless, while envy eats away at the human soul, gratitude nourishes it, filling the soul with the wonderful blessings which life affords. In his short story “The Diamond ...

It is market day in Goderville, and Maitre Hauchcorne of Breaute makes his way into town. As he walks along, he notices a piece of string in the road and, “economical like a true Norman,” picks it up.

Guy de Maupassant's masterful, thrillingly scabrous 1880 short story is, on one level, an account of a journey affected by "adverse weather conditions" – and as such is just the thing to have handy on ...

We knowGuy de Maupassant (1850-93) as France’s greatest practitioner of the short story. He is as widely anthologized as O. Henry and is known, in the U.S. at least, for much the same thing: the ...