This is The Author's Voice, New Fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Author's Voice, we'll hear Akiel Sharma read his story, A Life of Adventure

and Delight, from the May 16th, 2016 issue of the magazine.

Sharma is the author of two novels, An Abedient Father and Family Life. He's been publishing

fiction in The New Yorker since 1997. Now here's Akil Sharma.

A Life of Adventure and Delight

The side door of the police van slid open, rattling, and he was shoved inside.

There were seven or eight men already sitting on the floor in the dark, their wrists handcuffed behind them.

Nobody said anything. The van started with a jerk,

then picked up speed. His legs were stretched out in front of him, and he tried to use his

cuffed hands to balance himself, but the plastic cuffs tightened, and he and the other men

went rolling over the floor like loose bottles.

This was the first time that Gothamah had been arrested.

Before calling the prostitute, he had Googled the number in the ad to make sure that it wasn't being used by the police.

In the van, he remembered how, as he was being hurried down the stairs of his building,

one of the apartment doors was slightly ajar, a man in an

undershirt staring at him as he was led past. Gotham was 24, tall, slender with large brown eyes

and longish hair that framed his face. He was a PhD student in chemistry at New York University.

It arrived in America a year earlier, and, like many foreign students in America who are

living away from home for the first time, it immediately began loitering on Craigslist and

back page.

...