A calm, atmospheric reading of Luigi Pirandello's classic short story 'War', followed by a raw personal commentary on masculinity, emotional repression, and how we cope with tragedy. Accompanied by minimalist classical music. Perfect for late night reflection, quiet isolation, or solitary drives.

The story is about a group of passengers riding a night train during World War I. They are all grieving parents whose sons are either at the front lines or have already died and they begin talking about whose sacrifice is bigger and who has to endure more pain, until somebody shatters their emotional illusion. If you want to test your emotional illusion, then I invite you to listen on as we read the whole story together.

Welcome to the reading & commentary of Franz Kafka’s 1915 parable, Before the Law. In this episode, we read the classic text and dive into the psychology of self-inhibition, the weight of overbearing authority, and the exhausting reality of modern bureaucracy. And a little bit of personal reflection.

Franz Kafka remains one of the most influential and haunting voices of modern literature, famous for capturing the unsettling feeling of a world that operates on rules you aren't allowed to understand. Writing in German while living in early 20th-century Prague, Kafka worked a demanding day job at an insurance office, an experience that deeply colored his obsession with cold, labyrinthine bureaucracies. His signature blend of surreal absurdity, social alienation, and existential dread became so distinct that the term Kafkaesque was coined to describe any nightmarish, illogical situation where a normal person is trapped by an invisible, uncaring system.

His 1915 short piece, "Before the Law" (Vor dem Gesetz), is a masterful distillation of this exact atmosphere. The story functions as a simple parable: a man from the country travels to seek entrance to "the Law." When he arrives, he finds the entrance blocked by a fierce, heavily bearded doorkeeper who calmly tells him that he cannot enter at this moment. Rather than a dramatic physical clash or a flat refusal, the man is simply forced to wait. He sits on a stool by the door for days, months, and eventually decades, trying to reason with, beg, or bribe a guard who remains entirely indifferent to his suffering.

"The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits for days and years." — Franz Kafka, Before the Law

Kafka later embedded this exact parable into his famous posthumous novel The Trial, where it serves as a central puzzle for the main character. The story's brilliance lies in its deep psychological layers. Is "the Law" a metaphor for religious salvation, societal acceptance, or the ultimate meaning of life? Kafka refuses to give easy answers, leaving you to ponder a terrifyingly universal human anxiety: the fear that we might spend our entire lives waiting for permission from a system that doesn't even know we are there.

Anton Chekhov’s 1886 short story "Misery" is a heartbreaking look at how lonely grief can be. The story follows a poor Russian cab driver named Iona, who is completely brokenhearted because his son has just died. As he drives his horse-drawn sledge through the cold, snowy city, he desperately needs to talk to someone about his pain. He tries to open up to the different passengers who get into his cab throughout the night, but everyone is too busy, annoyed, or distracted to care. Having found zero empathy from other human beings, Iona looks for a listening ear elsewhere.

The man who wrote this moving story, Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), is one of the most famous short story writers in history. He actually worked as a doctor for most of his life, which gave him a unique, up-close look at human nature and suffering. Instead of writing long books with huge, dramatic action scenes, Chekhov changed modern literature by focusing on regular people and their everyday struggles. He was a master at using simple, brief details to show the deep emotions hidden beneath the surface of normal life, teaching readers to look closer at the quiet heartbreaks happening all around them.

In this episode we read a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) who is widely celebrated as the "Father of the Japanese short story" and a towering figure of modern Japanese literature. Renowned for his sharp psychological insight, dark wit, and razor-sharp prose, Akutagawa specialized in reinterpreting ancient historical and religious folklore through a deeply modern, skeptical lens. His immense impact on world literature is cemented by Japan’s most prestigious literary honor, the Akutagawa Prize, which continues to celebrate the country's finest emerging writers.

First published in 1918 in the children's literary magazine Akai Tori, "The Spider's Thread" (Kumo no Ito) is one of his most enduring and beautifully haunting masterpieces. The story blends traditional Buddhist imagery with a tense psychological drama, following a ruthless criminal named Kandata who is offered a single, fragile chance at escaping Hell via a silver spider's thread lowered by the Buddha. Deceptively simple on the surface, Akutagawa uses this brief fable to deliver a powerful, timeless critique of human egoism, the instinct for survival, and the cold mechanics of absolute salvation.

In this episode, we read a short story named "The Man Who Had No Lips" by Ahmad Shamlou. It's originally written in Farsi but I've tried to translate it to English while keeping the rhythmic flow. It's about a guy named Hossein Gholi who's got a pretty normal life, except for the fact that he doesn't have lips to smile with and that makes him unhappy. Hossein Gholi sets on a journey to find himself a pair of lips just so that he can smile for an hour or two and be happy, but eventually he has to face a different reality. A reality that teaches him and us an important lesson.

About the author: Shamlou worked tirelessly to build bridges between Iranian culture and the rest of the world. He translated iconic global authors into Persian, including the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Langston Hughes, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. At the same time, he was deeply committed to preserving the culture of everyday Iranians. He spent decades compiling Ketab-e Koucheh (The Book of the Alley), a massive, multi-volume encyclopedia dedicated entirely to Iranian street slang, proverbs, folklore, and beliefs.

Shamlou's work seamlessly shifted between fierce political resistance, social criticism and profound romantic intimacy. An unyielding humanist, he was a vocal critic of tyranny and spent time in prison under the Shah (before the 1979 Revolution) and faced heavy censorship after the 1979 Revolution.

"The allied occupation of Iran, towards the end of the second world war, inspired Shamlou's first patriotic poems. At 18, he was held in an allied prison for a year, for distributing anti-occupation pamphlets. Shortly after his release, he was arrested again, together with his father, by the separatist local government of Azerbaijan. They were left waiting for execution in front of a firing squad for hours before being freed" (TheGuardian).

Relax your mind and lose yourself in a hauntingly beautiful, atmospheric reading of Sadegh Hedayat’s masterpiece, "The Stray Dog." This deeply melancholic story follows the tragic perspective of Paat, a loyal dog lost in a world of human indifference.

In this episode, I read an English translation of one of Sadegh Hedayat's most famous short stories, The Stray Dog (translated by me). It tells the story of a dog named Paat who loses his owner (master) near the square of Varamin in Tehran, and the consequences that follow. Simultaneously, it also explores Paat's past. This story was published in 1942.

Sadegh Hedayat was an Iranian writer, translator, satirist, and poet. He was born on February 17, 1903 in Tehran, Iran. Writing during a time of intense cultural transition in the early twentieth century, Hedayat injected a raw, Kafkaesque existentialism into the heart of Iranian fiction. His stories are psychological autopsies, masterfully uncovering the deep alienation of the human condition, the blurring lines between nightmare and reality, and a profound disillusionment with the modern world. He died by suicide on April 9, 1951, in Paris, France. He was 48 years old at the time of his death.