This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Debra Treesman, 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 Loneliness by Bruno Schultz, translated from the Polish

by Celina Viennevska, which was published in the New Yorker in November of 1977.

It is you, I want to exclaim.

You have always been my faithful reflection.

You have accompanied me for so many years, and now you don't recognize me.

The story was chosen by Alejandro Zambra, a Chilean poet, novelist and story writer,

whose most recent novel, Chilean poet, will be published in English this month.

Hi Alejandro.

Hi Debra.

Thank you for doing this.

Oh, thank you.

So you chose Bruno Schultz as the writer you most wanted to read quite quickly.

Can you tell me how you first discovered his work?

Oh, yes, it was a long time ago.

I think it was 1998.

I was 23 or something.

And I was in this second hand bookstore in downtown Santiago and came across Sanatorium

under the sign of the hourglass.

And I remember I had heard of Bruno Schultz.

...