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, my guest is the novelist Gary Steinkart,

and he chose a story by Andrea Lee that came out in the winter of 2000,

called Brothers and Sisters Around the World.

The girls squatting under the mango trees stare hard at me whenever I sit out on the beach

or walk down to the water to swim.

They stare at me and gaffaw and stretch and give their breasts a competitive shake.

Gary Steinkart is the author of Two Novels,

the Russian debutant's handbook and absurdistan,

excerpts from which appeared in the New Yorker.

He was born in St. Petersburg, which was then Leningrad,

but left Russia when he was seven,

and has lived in New York on and off since then.

Hi, Gary.

Hi.

Now, when I was coming here today,

I was trying to think up some parallels between your writing and Andrea Lee's writing.

I couldn't come up with much.

She writes about elegant wealthy Europeans and American expats in Europe,

and you write about blow-grade criminals and con men

...