This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker, and Deputy Patriceman

fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Han Ahn read his story, the monkey who

speaks, from the September 13th, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Ahn, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Berlin Prize, is the author of more

than a dozen plays in two novels, Fixer Chao and the Disinherited.

Now here's Han Ahn.

The monkey who speaks.

Roscoe could stand to lose 20 pounds, closer to 30 would be even better.

It would ease the burden on his heart.

Even blessing though, he's still ambulatory.

At his most intrepid, he makes do with an aluminum cane.

Not for him, the Swav models, he and Flavia marveled over in a catalog for the Dapper

Older Gentlemen, which had appeared in Roscoe's mailbox, but with somebody else's name

on the address label.

One cane had a detachable metal eagle handle and a tapered body who's tipped with sheath

and copper.

Another had a concealed dagger that you accessed by unscrewing the head, which was of a beagle,

deceitfully hapless.

Most days, Flavia takes him for a walk, circling the two or three blocks around his Ridgewood

home and he uses a walker.

The only exception is when there is ice on the sidewalk.

...