I first read this story when I was 16, during a period when I was very lost and unhappy in the wake of my father’s death. It was one of the first texts to open up the possibilities of literature for me and it still lifts my spirits. The story is tiny, so short that I can insert the whole thing here:
Alas,’ said the mouse, ‘the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.’ ‘You only need to change your direction,’ said the cat, and ate it up.
First published as ‘Kleine Fabel’ in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1931, and in English in The Great Wall of China, Schocken, 1946
A Personal Anthology 