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 Truth and Fiction by Sylvia Townsend Warner,

which was published in the New Yorker in December of 1961.

Clive saw what the boy was looking at, a stranger carrying a bag.

Of course, that was the answer.

He smiled at the boy who did not return his smile and walked back to the front door,

mounted its pretentious steps and pulled the bell handle.

The story was chosen by Elif Batumann,

whose most recent novel, either or, was published earlier this year.

Hi, Elif.

Hi, Deborah.

So when I asked you to be a guest on the podcast,

you went down a kind of rabbit hole of reading archival fiction

that took you to many other writers before you landed on Sylvia Townsend Warner.

So what led you to her?

Well, I love archives.

I was just really enjoying poking around.

And Sylvia Townsend Warner was on my radar as a writer who I was interested in reading more about.

I don't know very much about her work at all.

I guess I heard about her from friends who are really into her, mostly in England.

...