Ask HN: Recommend a short fiction book

A Month in the Country. A WW I vet takes a job in a small English village restoring an old mural in a church -- it has been covered with paint for 400 years. The mural itself plays a role in the story, but it's mostly about the vet meeting and getting to feel at home among the locals.

It sounds like you need a fourth language there, perhaps something from Russian, Italian or Spanish literature. Unfortunately, everything I think of has too many pages.

There might be an edition of "Fathers and sons" that comes in under 200 pages. It's one of the shortest Russian novels I've read.

From English literature: "Animal farm", "Three men in a boat".

Try some stories by Jorge Luis Borges, perhaps, such as "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan".

Short stories by Haruki Murakami - The Elephant Vanishes

Waiting for Godot (play) - Beckett

Neuromancer - Gibson

The Pat Hobby Stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald