Jonas Eika Reads “Alvin”

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Fiction, Authors, Arts, New, Newyorker, Yorker

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🗓️ 13 April 2021

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jonas Eika reads his story from the April 19, 2021, issue of the magazine, which was translated from the Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg. Eika, a Danish writer, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2019 for his short-story collection “After the Sun,” which will be published in English in August.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.
0:09.6	I'm Debra Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.
0:12.9	On this episode of The writer's voice, we'll hear Jonas Aika read his story Alvin, translated
0:18.6	from The Danish by Sheryl and Nicolette Helberg from the April 19th, 2021 issue of the magazine.
0:25.5	Aika, a Danish writer, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2019 for his short story collection
0:32.2	after the Sun, which will be published in English in August. Now here's Jonas Aika.
0:42.8	Alvin. I arrived in Copenhagen, Sweden and halfway out of myself, after an extremely fictional
0:50.6	flight. Frankly, I would use that word for any air travel, but on this trip I had, shortly after
0:57.8	take-off, fallen into a light feverish days in which I relived the serious flights I had taken
1:04.0	early in my life. First, there was the trip home from Nepal with my ex-wife, then girlfriend.
1:11.7	Our first trip together when we, maybe out of boredom, curled up in a seats and took turns miming
1:17.7	various sexual scenarios that the other person had to guess and sketch on a piece of paper,
1:23.5	which we tore into pieces and reassembled into new situations to mime again so that the game could
1:30.2	continue for eternity. In my days, there was also my departure from Copenhagen six years later,
1:38.9	after she became pregnant around the same time that she had been cheating on me with a colleague,
1:44.2	and I was so panicked and grieved by my jealousy, which seemed just as impossible to live with if
1:50.4	the baby was mine, as if it wasn't, that I packed my things and went to the airport and set
1:56.2	malaga to the man behind the counter. For some reason, I set malaga. Additionally, I relived a
2:03.7	flight home from malaga from a work trip a few years later, during which I was unable to work,
2:10.2	to say or to anyone, because I was completely paralyzed by what I had seen from my window during
2:16.6	take-off. Past the gates, overlooking the runway, there was an observation deck where kids of all ages
2:24.5	stood with their parents watching the planes take off. At one end, a woman leaned against the
	...

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