Inspiration Relay
The last forty chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber are lost. Qing-dynasty readers wrote dozens of sequels, each unconvinced by the others. Now it's your turn — take the baton and write your version. Every continuation stays here, growing into one tree.
This week's relay
European · William Shakespeare · England
The Friar's message never arrived. That's the whole tragedy — a late letter. But what if it had arrived on time? Or darker: continue from the morning after,...
European · William Shakespeare · England · plays
Continue Hamlet: Horatio's version
The stage is littered with bodies, and Horatio alone is left to tell the story. Shakespeare gives him the last word...
European · Emily Brontë · England · novels
Continue Wuthering Heights: the next generation
The ghosts walk no more; young Cathy and Hareton are learning to read together. Emily Brontë ends in fragile peace....
European · Charlotte Brontë · England · novels
Continue Jane Eyre: Bertha's voice
Bertha Mason is the madwoman in the attic — Charlotte Brontë never lets her speak. But she had a life in Jamaica...
European · Jane Austen · England · novels
Continue Pride and Prejudice: ten years of marriage
Ten years of marriage. The estate, the children, Lydia still Lydia, Lady Catherine still Lady Catherine. Austen gave...
European · William Shakespeare · England · plays
Continue Macbeth: Malcolm's first year
Malcolm takes the throne and order is restored — on the surface. But the witches prophesied that Banquo's line would...
European · Oscar Wilde · Ireland · novels
Continue Dorian Gray: who finds the painting
The portrait is slashed and Dorian dies, suddenly old and withered. Wilde ends in moral symmetry. But the attic...
European · Bram Stoker · Ireland · novels
Continue Dracula: Whitby, one year later
The Count is destroyed — or so Van Helsing's band believes. Stoker left only ashes and a question mark. Continue:...
European · Mary Shelley · England · novels
Continue Frankenstein: the creature after Victor
The creature vanishes into the Arctic darkness, and Mary Shelley lets him go. But he is still alive out there — the...
European · Charles Dickens · England · novels
Continue A Tale of Two Cities: Lucie's long life
Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine: 'a far, far better thing.' Lucie lives on, carrying his sacrifice like a...
European · Charles Dickens · England · novels
Continue Great Expectations: the third ending
Dickens rewrote the ending of Great Expectations twice — first bleak, then hopeful. He couldn't decide what Pip...
European · Arthur Conan Doyle · England · stories
Continue Sherlock Holmes: the case Watson never wrote
Doyle hinted at cases Watson never wrote down — 'the giant rat of Sumatra' and others. The canon is full of locked...
European · R. L. Stevenson · Scotland · novels
Continue Jekyll and Hyde: Utterson's decision
Utterson has read Jekyll's full confession. He knows everything now — the powders, the murders, the suicide....
European · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · Germany · verse drama
Continue Faust: what the saved man does with eternity
Goethe saves Faust at the very end — angels carry him up, and the whole tragedy tilts toward grace. But eternity is...
European · Leo Tolstoy · Russia · novels
Continue Anna Karenina: Anna steps back
Anna steps in front of the train — or does she? Tolstoy's ending is inevitable, but inevitability is a choice the...
European · Nikolai Gogol · Russia (burned manuscript) · novels
Continue Dead Souls: the burned chapters
Gogol burned the manuscript of Dead Souls Part Two in a religious crisis — the chapters went up in smoke, and he...
European · Dante Alighieri · Italy · poetry
Continue the Divine Comedy: Dante after Paradise
Dante climbs from Hell through Purgatory to Paradise and beholds the Love that moves the sun and the other stars....
European · François Rabelais · France · novels
Continue Gargantua: what the bottle said
Gargantua and Pantagruel quest for the Oracle of the Holy Bottle — 'Drink!' Rabelais died mid-sentence, in a way;...
European · Giovanni Boccaccio · Italy · stories
Continue the Decameron: the eleventh day
Ten days, ten stories a day, one hundred tales to outwait the plague. Boccaccio's brigata returns to Florence when...