This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Deborah 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 story by Amos Oz called The King of Norway.

One evening, as he regaled her with an affecting description of the starvation in Somalia,

compassion for him so overwhelmed her that she suddenly took his hand and held it to abreast.

Speed trembled and pulled it back quickly with a gesture that was almost violent.

The story was chosen by Jonathan Safran 4, whose fiction has been appearing in the magazine since 2001.

His novels include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated.

He joins me from a studio in Brooklyn.

Hi Jonathan.

Hello.

I know you've spent some time in Israel in the last few years. Have you ever met Amos Oz?

I have met him. In fact, he was a teacher of mine when I was at Princeton.

I was visiting for a semester and I took a class on contemporary...

No, no, it was actually the history of Hebrew literature.

At the time, my parents told me, oh, you know, Amos Oz is going to be appearing in this bookstore in Washington, D.C.

Why don't you offer to drive him down?

When that be nice, you'd have four hours in the car with him and then you can of course come see us, which is always a great thing.

So I said to him, at the risk of overreaching here, I know you're going to be in D.C.

And I have a car and I drive, would you like a lift?

And I said, sure, that would be great. And the night before I was quite nervous, because he really wasn't a kind of hero of mine.

...