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 the cafeteria in the evening and a pool in the rain by Yoko Agawa,

which was translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder,

and published in The New Yorker in September of 2004.

In three weeks my fiance and I would be married, a small ceremony,

with only the two of us present, and then he would move here.

In the meantime, it was up to me to get the house ready.

The story was chosen by Madeline Tien, whose books include the novels,

Dogs at the Perimeter, and do not say we have nothing,

which won the Governor General's Literary Award and the Scotia Bank Giller Prize.

Hi Maddie, welcome.

Hi Debra.

So why did you choose a story by Yoko Agawa to read today?

Oh, I love Yoko Agawa's writing.

She's one of those writers.

I always think I just want to talk to everyone about how I'm going to say,

what is she doing? How does she do it?

What is that strange, difficult to name feeling that arises?

And that's when we read her work.

What is that feeling?

...