This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Elif Batuman read her story, Constructed Worlds,

from the January 23rd, 2017 issue of the magazine.

Batumann is the author of The Possessed Adventures with Russian Books and the People

Who Read Them.

Constructed Worlds is adapted from her forthcoming first novel, The Idiot, which will be

published in March.

Now here's Elif Batumann.

Thank you. in March. Now here's Elif Bateman. Constructed Worlds

I didn't know what email was until I got to college.

I had heard of email and knew that in some sense I would have it.

You'll be so fancy, said my mother's sister, who had married a computer scientist, sending your emails.

That summer, I heard email mention with increasing frequency.

Things are changing so fast, Célyn, my father said when I visited him that August.

Today at work I surfed the World Wide Web.

One second I was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One second later, I was in Anitkabir.

Anitkabir, Ataturk's mausoleum, was located in Ankara, where my parents had gone to medical school. I had no idea

what my father was talking about, but he lived in New Orleans, and I knew there was no meaningful

sense in which he had been in Ankara that day, so I didn't really pay attention. On the first

day of school, I stood in line behind a folding table and eventually received an email address and a temporary password.

...