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 Quistio de Cantoris, a primo levy translated from the Italian

by Jenny McPhee, which was published in the New Yorker in June of 2015.

The centors origins are legendary, but legends that they pass down among themselves are very

different from the classical tales we know.

The story was chosen by Jumpa Lahiri, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her debut story collection

interpreter of maladies in 2000 and recently edited the Penguin Book of Italian short

stories.

Hi, Jumpa.

Hi, Debra.

As I just mentioned, you recently edited and published the Penguin Book of Italian

short stories, which includes 40 Italian stories that were written over the course of

the 20th century.

And you included this story by primo levy.

What was it about this story that made you want to have it in there?

Well, as with many of my selections, they grow out of conversations I've had with people.

I've met over the past seven years as I've been living in Italy.

So when I was considering a story by levy, I immediately turned to my friend, a man named

Marco Belpolliti, who has written a lot about primo levy and has edited his completed

...