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 Jumpa Lahiri read her story The Boundary from the January 29th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Lahiri is the author of two novels and two short story collections.

Her first book, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000,

and her most recent novel, The Lowland, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award in 2014.

Now here's Jumpa Lahiri.

The Boundary.

Every Saturday, a new family comes to stay.

Some arrive early in the morning, from afar, ready to begin their vacation.

Others don't turn up until sunset, in bad moods, maybe having lost their way. It's easy to get lost in these hills. The roads are poorly

signposted. Today, after they introduced themselves, I show them around. My mother used to do the

welcoming, but she's spending the summer in a nearby town, helping out an elderly gentleman

who's also on vacation, so I have to do it. As usual, there are four of them, mother, father,

two daughters. They follow me, their eyes wide, happy to stretch their legs. We stop for a moment on the

shaded patio that looks out over the lawn, under a that

thatched roof that filters the light.

There are two armchairs and a sofa, covered with white fabric, lounge chairs for sunbathing,

and a wooden table, big enough for ten people.

I opened the sliding glass door and show them inside,

the cozy living room with two comfortable sofas in front of the fireplace, the well-stocked kitchen,

two bedrooms. While the father unloads the car and the girls, who are probably around seven and nine,

...