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 a story from 1986 called The Colonel Says I Love You by Sergei Devlatov.

The divorce would be a mistake. We would like to see your family reunited, the Colonel said smiling broadly.

After all, you love them, don't you?

The Colonel says I love you was chosen by David Bismoskis, the author of Natasha and other stories.

The stories have also appeared in The New Yorker.

He joins me from the studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto where he lives.

Hi, David.

Hi.

So Sergei Devlatov emigrated to the US from Russia in 1979 when he was 38.

And he lived here until he died in 1990 when he was only 48.

And in the 80s he published translations of 10 of his stories in the magazine.

But part of your reason for choosing him I think was that his work has since then been to a great extent forgotten.

Why do you think that is?

I have no idea.

It's hard to explain these sorts of things, but I think he's such a wonderful writer and such a great humorist.

So I really don't know.

Do you know if he's well known in Russia or is he sort of overlooked there as well?

Well, I think that's the irony.

I mean, he wasn't until the fall of the Soviet Union from what I understand.

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