The Top 10 Short Stories - The 1910's - The Europeans

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted 'Top Tens' across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions - Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

In this volume we examine a decade of tumult and upheaval for the continent and its Empires as both countries and social classes tense under insoluble issues. All at once Europe is engulfed in slaughter and overwhelmed by fighting. Its authors use their pens both to help enlighten and to provide some scant strands of escape in these most demanding of times.

1 - The Top 10 - The 1910's - The Europeans - An Introduction
2 - The Dead - Part 1 by James Joyce
3 - The Dead - Part 2 by James Joyce
4 - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
5 - Sicilian Limes by Luigi Pirandello
6 - The Garden of the Holy Virgin by Alexander Kuprin
7 - The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle
8 - Son by Ivan Bunin
9 - The Marseillaise by Leonid Andreyev
10 - Dethroned by I N Potapenko
11 - The Revolutionist by Mikhail Petrovich Artzybashev
12 - The Testament of Magdalen Blair - Part 1 by Aleister Crowley
13 - The Testament of Magdalen Blair - Part 2 by Aleister Crowley