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 the rescue will begin in its own time.

Four short fiction pieces by Franz Kafka, translated from the German by Michael Hoffman,

which were published in the New Yorker in June of 2020.

Even though the knife was big and sharp and the bread neither too soft nor too hard, the

knife could not cut into it.

We children looked up at Father in surprise.

He said, why should you be surprised?

Isn't it more surprising if something succeeds than if it fails?

The stories were chosen by Ben Oakley, who is the author of two dozen books of fiction,

poetry and nonfiction, including the novels The Famished Road, which won the Booker Prize

in 1991 and the Freedom Artist, which was published in 2019.

Hi Ben.

Hello Debra.

Welcome.

So when we started talking about doing the podcast, one thing that was very clear to me was

that you feel an affinity with Kafka's work, what is it that makes what he does important

to you?

Well, it's hard to say the more you read Kafka, the more confusing it is actually.

...