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 a slice of life by Vladimir Nabokov, translated from the

1925 Russian text by Dmitry Nabokov in collaboration with the author, which was published in the New

Yorker in April of 1976.

For the first time he sat on my couch and shed cigarette ashes on my polychrome cushions.

Yet the event, which would once have given me divine pleasure, now did not gladden me one

bit.

The story was chosen by Jonas Hassan Kemiri, a Swedish fiction writer and playwright whose

novels include The Family Clause and everything I don't remember.

Hi, Jonas, welcome.

Thank you.

So, can you tell me what your first connection with Nabokov was?

Has he had a big influence on you?

I discovered him when I was in my early 20s.

For a long time I had been writing with a kind of shame because I enjoyed it so much.

I just understood that as a writer, you kind of should not love it or you should focus

a lot on how hard it is and how difficult it is.

Of course, it's tricky to write beautiful sentences.

Of course, it's tricky to kind of create a new one's character.

...