Sjömansbiblioteket

"A most extraordinary thing happened in St. Petersburg on the twenty-fifth of March." The opening lines of "The Nose", one of Gogol’s best-known stories, and quite possibly the mos ...

In Nikolai Gogol's short story 'May Night, or the Drowned Maiden,' a single night ends up changing the lives of many. Young Levko is the son of the head of a Ukrainian village and ...

How far will a man go for love? The short story 'St. John's Eve' by Nikolai Gogol from the 19th century recounts the sinister events that transpired in a poor hamlet generations ag ...

'The Fair at Sorochyntsi' by Nikolai Gogol is a short story set in a Ukrainian village in 1800. A man travels with his daughter and wife to a fair to sell some of their belongings. ...

This classic novel about adventure, courage and determination takes the reader on an exciting sea voyage around the world. Engaging and entertaining, "In Search of the Castaways" f ...

Dr. Ox wants to introduce a new gas lighting system in a small Flemish town. Free of charge. However something does not add up. Solely because Dr. Ox’s goal is not as philanthropic ...

Teeming with dark humour, supernatural elements, and hard-to-believe situations, Nikolai Gogol’s "Collected Stories" is a highest form of short story fiction. With stories like "Th ...

Rudy lived close to the little town of Grindelwald in Switzerland. He lived with his uncle as his parents were both dead. Indeed, Rudy himself had almost died at the same time as h ...

Once upon a time, a young man dreamed of becoming a writer and making a living from his pen. But there was a problem. The writers of the previous centuries had already exhausted al ...

A family of toads lived in a very deep well: it was so deep that, from the top, you could not even see the surface of the water. One of the young toads dreamed of knowing what ther ...

The star that is brightest this morning knows many things: she has watched over the earth for centuries and knows many things that we men have long forgotten. Today, she tells us t ...

One day a Portuguese duck arrived at the duck house. Some said she came from Spain, but from then on all her descendants were called ‘Portuguese’. Today, there is only one Portugue ...

On the day that the emperor’s horse received his golden horseshoes as a reward for his heroic deeds, the beetle who shared his stable was very jealous. The smith refused to make sh ...

Anne Lisbeth was a beautiful young woman, but she gave birth to a repugnantly ugly child. That is why she gave it into the care of the wife of a man who worked in the fields. This ...

He had been ill a long time and God came for him – the parents and sisters of the little four-year-old boy who had died were inconsolable. No chagrin was greater than that of the b ...

Once upon a time there were five brothers who had arrived at the age where they asked themselves what they would become. Each of the brothers wanted to become "something" and each ...

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Scheherazade had not ceased with her tales and told the king another story that is actually a retelling of a previous story, but ...

An example of Poe’s mystery-laden and dream-oriented short stories, "A Tale of the Rugged Mountains" offers unique perspective on important notions at the time – mesmerism, alterna ...

Poe’s symptomatic need to portray dying or already dead women is evocative of his own failed and miserably spent marriage life to his young cousin. "Morella", in a way similar to " ...

An example of Poe’s melancholic and morbid poetic pieces, "A Dream Within a Dream" is a poem that pitifully mourns the passing of time. The poet’s own life, teeming with depression ...

The story unanimously voices Poe’s obsessive concern with premature burial. Dwelling on humanity’s fear of being buried alive, Edgar Allan Poe provides not only examples of such di ...

Considered one of Poe’s most famous and best constructed terror short stories, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is most likely to grab the reader in its clutches and never let them ...

"Eleonora" is a short story that draws heavily from E. A. Poe’s own life and marriage. Surprisingly optimistic and devoid of any real terrors, the tale, though dealing with similar ...

The story that we are going to tell you is about one smart little tailor who was so wise that he managed to solve a princess’s riddle. Can you guess what the reward was? Of course ...

The wolf hears the rumor that there is no stronger being than the human. So he is determined to see for himself. One day the wolf meets a hunter with a gun and a knife. Do you thin ...