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 Gomez Palacio by Roberto Bellagno.

In the rear-view mirror I could see an enormous wall rising beyond the town.

It took me a while to realize it was the night.

The story was chosen by Daniel Alercone, who was featured in the New Yorker's 20 under 40 Fiction issue,

and has been publishing stories in the magazine since 2003.

His novel Lost City Radio came out in 2007.

He joins us from the studios of KQED in San Francisco.

Hi, Daniel.

Hi, Debra.

So, Bologna was raised in Chile and lived in Mexico and then he spent his last years in Spain.

He died in 2003, which was the year that his work started to come out in English translation.

When did you first come across him?

Were you reading him before that in Spanish?

I'd heard of him.

He was one of those writers that was sort of starting to become very, very well-known.

And then, you know, two years later he was one of those writers that every university student had a copy of his book under their arm.

And it just exploded.

I think I remember I was traveling in 2003, 2004 actually,

when 26, 66 arrived in Chile.

...