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

I'm Deborah 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 Waiting for Death in a Hotel by Italo Calvino,

which was translated from the Italian by Martin McLaughlin,

and published in The New Yorker in June of 2006.

This was Michaela's funeral procession.

He was a dead man pacing to his own grave along that hallway with its flaking,

stucco ceiling roses and the faded traces of wall mirrors above the marble mantles.

The story was chosen by Andrea Alexis, whose novels include childhood,

Days by Moonlight and 15 dogs, which won the Giller Prize in 2015.

Hi, Andrea. Welcome.

How are you, Deborah?

I'm all right.

So, can you tell me a bit about your engagement with Calvino's work?

Are you a long-time reader of his?

I am deeply indebted to him in ways that it can be difficult for me to kind of squish down

and make coherent quickly.

He is really important to me for his love of folklore.

He is also super important to me as a member of the Olippo,

the Uvoa de L'Itadatio Pot doncelle, which was created in 1961,

I think, by Remocano and Francois Lullinet, which is a group that tried to introduce mathematical ideas

...