This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Debra Triesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Jonathan Leatham read his story The

Crooked House from the March 8, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Leatham is the author of 17 books of fiction, including the novel's Motherless Brooklyn,

The Feral Detective, and most recently The Arrest, which was published last year.

Now here's Jonathan Leatham.

The Crooked House The week he met the man who claimed to have

exited the house by falling downward into a desert valley, Mull decided to give up coffee.

Mull had lost regular access to the community cafeteria and its coffee supply.

The corridor leading to it had disappeared in one of the building's periodic shifts.

But he could still see into the cafeteria, the window of his dormitory room opened onto

the scene from high above, offering a bird's eye view.

When Mull cracked the window, he could smell the rising steam of the coffee brewing.

Mull, after laboring through the now-illusive corridor, had rarely found others in the

cafeteria, just coffee in the 20-pot urn.

Once or twice, the supply had been down to drags.

Those times Mull had brewed a fresh urn himself from supplies stacked there.

Others probably did the same, though he'd never caught them at it.

The scene was hardly scintillating to watch, once one adjusted to the surveillance camera

perspective.

Still, he glanced through the window.

...