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 the pet by Nadine Gordamer, which was published in the New Yorker in March of 1962.

Erica Morgan, she sometimes had educated Africans to lunch, told him that he could sit in the living room and listen to the radio if he liked, but he never did.

The story was chosen by Joseph O'Neill, who's the author of four novels, including The Dog in Netherlands, which won the 2009 Penn Falkmer Award for Fiction.

Hi, Joe.

Hi, Deborah.

So, what drew you to Nadine Gordamer? How did you first come across this story?

I've actually been familiar with this story for a while because I teach up at Bard College and one of the courses I was teaching was a course on political fiction.

And I looked at this story and I saw that it was quite interesting on that front.

In that particular framework, we did look at the politics and we looked at the historical context, which was a partite of Africa.

And a context which is now a sort of mythic context for students at college these days, but which was when I was at their age, very important.

I mean, in the 80s, you know, there was a lot of activism surrounding a partite, international activism, and the movement of free Nelson Mandela was a sort of important part of a student experience in those days.

And so I suppose from a personal point of view, you're reading the story reminded me of that era.

Right. And the story is about a white couple who employ a black servant who's actually not from South Africa, but from New Zealand, which is 3,000 miles away.

That setup has some inherent political content. Do you think of the story as being explicitly political?

I mean, when I read for politics, I'm not really reading for explicit proclamations. I'm reading for a number of things.

The chief of which is the role of the state. Where is the state in the story?

And it's very interesting because as you say, the protagonist's gradual is from Niasa Land, which is Nama Lawi.

And in fact, the story takes place. And there's a reference to it during the years in which Lawi was achieving its independence.

And he's even lower if I can put it that way than the South African blacks, because he's undocumented.

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