2018-04-03
48 分钟Mohsin Hamid joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Book of Sand,” by Jorge Luis Borges, from a 1976 issue of the magazine.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month we're going to hear the Book of sand by Jorge Luis Borges, translated from the Spanish by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, which was published in the New Yorker in October of 1976.
He opened the suitcase and laid the.
Book on a table.
It was an octavo volume bound in cloth.
There was no doubt that it had passed through many hands.
The story was chosen by Mohsin Hamed, who is the author of four novels, including the reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit west, which were both finalists for the Man Booker Prize.
He joins us from true brew Records in Lahore, Pakistan.
Hi, Mohsin.
Hi, Deborah.
So can we start by just talking about why you wanted to read a Borges story today?
I know that was important to you.
I'm wondering what Borges has meant to you both as a writer and as a reader.
Well, Borges is a hugely important writer for me.
When I was looking back at the New Yorker archives, there were so many amazing writers, but I, I suppose I began by thinking of the ones that I most wanted to read, and I was surprised to discover so many Borges stories in the New Yorker.
He is a writer I first encountered when I was at university in my senior year.
Last semester, I took a course on modernist literature, and Borges was assigned and I picked up a book called Fictions.
And in that book there was an introduction.