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 a village after dark, by Caso Ishaeguru, which appeared

in the New Yorker in 2001.

When the silence behind me had gone unbroken for several minutes, I resolved to address

my hosts with a little more civility and I turned in my chair.

The story was chosen by Ben Marcus to a few stories have appeared in the magazine this year.

His new novel, The Flame Alphabet, will be published in January.

Hi, Ben.

Hi.

Ishaeguru was born in Japan and he moved to England as a child and he's probably best known

for his 1989 novel Remains of the Day and the 2005 novel Never Let Me Go, both of which

were made into movies.

When did you start reading him?

I read Remains of the Day and I wasn't sure what I had read.

It was so quiet and so subtle.

It was gripping, but I couldn't figure out why and I didn't think I should be interested

in a butler and some regret he might have had.

It's just so modest, but I felt such control and when I reread it, I saw all these little

things he was doing to suggest this vast, awful inner life of his main character.

...