99 Must-Read Stories Recommended by Luca Ricci

Which are the stories that have marked the history of the genre in the literature of the last two centuries? Who are the most significant authors of modern times when we talk about short stories?

“I have compiled this very personal list, trying to embrace several countries and varieties, seeking to broaden it as much as possible while keeping my tastes fixed. Take it with a grain of salt; it’s only an attempt to spark curiosity about a neglected form, the short story.”

The answer comes from Luca Ricci, who returns to bookstores with Foglie d’acero, a volume published by Racconti. This is a special collection of short stories. Yes, because just as maple leaves reach their peak just before detaching from the branch, stories truly come into being just before their fall. Hence the title of Ricci’s latest work. And thus, the triangle at the tips of which lie love, autumn, and the short story offers potentially infinite combinations, because they all speak of the same thing. Every love carries a finitude within its beginning; every autumn narrates human finiteness; and the short story, the brief form of narration, has an imminent end.

Ricci signs 33 new stories, “in which love, literature and the short story find their ultimate unity and cohesion in the shared thread: the vertigo of an impending loss.”

For La nave di Teseo he published Gli autunnali (2018), Trascurate Milano (2018), Gli estivi (2020), Il nero abisso esistente tra noi (2020), Gli invernali (2021), Vitalità dell’amore (2022) e I primaverili (2023).

99 racconti consigliati

And now here are 99 modern short stories considered most significant, that the writer selected for us:

1. The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1816)
2. The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley (1833)
3. Wakefield by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1835)
4. The Nose by Nikolaj Vasil’evič Gogol’ (1836)
5. The Dead Woman in Love by Théophile Gautier (1836)
6. The Tell-Tale Heart
7. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)
8. Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval (1853)
9. The Crimson Curtain by Barbey d’Aurevilly (1874)
10. The She-Wolf by Giovanni Verga (1880)
11. Vera by Auguste de Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (1883)
12. The Female Normal School by Matilde Serao (1885)
13. The Bent Mirror by Anton Čechov (1883)
14. The Tresses by Guy de Maupassant (1884)
15. Kabuliwala by Rabindranath Tagore (1892)
16. The Holes in the Mask by Jean Lorrain (1895)
17. The Moth by H. G. Wells (1895)
18. The Thirteenth Night by Ichiyō Higuchi (1895)
19. The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James (1896)
20. Yuki-onna by Lafcadio Hearn (1904)
21. The Old Maid and Death by Alfred Döblin (1905)
22. The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (1907)
23. The Dead by James Joyce (1907)
24. To Light a Fire by Jack London (1908)
25. After by Edith Wharton (1910)
26. The Cart by Luigi Pirandello (1917)
27. The Sign on the Wall by Virginia Woolf (1921)
28. The Fear by Federico de Roberto (1921)
29. In the Woods by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1922)
30. A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka (1922)
31. The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield (1922)
32. The Crossing of the Zbruch by Isaak Babel’ (1924)
33. The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft (1926)
34. Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway (1927)
35. The Ball by Irène Némirovsky (1930)
36. Babylon Revisited by Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1930)
37. The Last Fog by María Luisa Bombal (1934)
38. Rainy Moon by Colette (1940)
39. Elena by Anaïs Nin (1940)
40. My Husband by Natalia Ginzburg (1941)
41. Yet They Knock at the Door by Dino Buzzati (1942)
42. Christmas by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1942)
43. A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J. D. Salinger (1948)
44. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (1948)
45. The Orchids of Felisberto Hernández by Felisberto Hernández (1949)
46. The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges (1949)
47. The Hunting Rifle by Inoue Yasushi (1949)
48. Babette’s Feast by Karen Blixen (1950)
49. The Occupied House by Julio Cortázar (1951)
50. Other People’s House by Silvio D’Arzo (1952)
51. A Pair of Glasses by Anna Maria Ortese (1953)
52. Six Feet of Ground by Nadine Gordimer (1953)
53. Impostor by Philip K. Dick (1953)
54. The Whirlpool by Beppe Fenoglio (1954)
55. A Martian in Rome by Ennio Flaiano (1954)
56. Sentinel by Fredric Brown (1954)
57. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (1955)
58. The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (1956)
59. The Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1957)
60. The Adventure of Two Lovers by Italo Calvino (1958)
61. The Velvet Dress by Silvina Ocampo (1959)
62. The Imitation of the Rose by Clarice Lispector (1960)
63. The Builders by Richard Yates (1962)
64. The Andalusian Shawl by Elsa Morante (1963)
65. The Swimmer by John Cheever (1964)
66. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates (1966)
67. The Writer’s Morning by Tommaso Landolfi (1966)
68. Love Object by Edna O’Brien (1967)
69. The Ball by Donald Barthelme (1968)
70. Ad infinitum: a short story by John Barth (1968)
71. A Lusty Mermaid by Charles Bukowski (1972)
72. The Long Journey by Leonardo Sciascia (1973)
73. A Conversation with My Father by Grace Paley (1974)
74. Cocker at the Theatre by Ian McEwan (1975)
75. Story by Lydia Davis (1976)
76. Postoristoro by Pier Vittorio Tondelli (1980)
77. Cathedral by Raymond Carver (1981)
78. Anywhere Out of the World by Antonio Tabucchi (1985)
79. The Poet Keeps Silent by Abraham B. Yehoshua (1987)
80. Light Conditions on the Emilia Way by Gianni Celati (1987)
81. For Smokers Only by Julio Ramón Ribeyro (1987)
82. I Came Only to Call by Gabriel García Márquez (1992)
83. The Brightest Crown of Angels in Heaven by Rick Moody (1995)
84. Fresh Snow by Tobias Wolff (1996)
85. A Literary Adventure by Roberto Bolaño (1997)
86. Forever Up There by David Foster Wallace (1999)
87. Intimacy by Richard Ford (2001)
88. Enemy, Friend, Lover… by Alice Munro (2001)
89. What You Have on Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2004)
90. Greed by Amy Hempel (2006)
91. The Lost Girl by Salvatore Mannuzzu (2011)
92. The Silver Candlestick by Abelardo Castillo (2013)
93. The Fruit of My Woman by Han Kang (2013)
94. The Stone Bed by Margaret Atwood (2014)
95. Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (2015)
96. Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian (2017)
97. A World Without Selfie-Sticks by Etgar Keret (2024)
98. The Feminist by Tony Tulathimutte (2024)
99. Welcome Among Us by Samanta Schweblin (2025)

*Where the exact date of composition of a given short story could not be found, the date of first publication in the original language (magazine or book) was used.