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 Disguised by Isaac Bachevich Singer.

Tim Merler herself was about to faint, yet she noticed that the woman's cheeks were not smooth but fuzzy

as if she were sprouting a beard.

Disguised was published in the New Yorker in 1986.

It was chosen by Nathan Englander, author of the novel, The Ministry of Special Cases,

and the short story collection for the relief of unbearable urges.

His short stories have also appeared in the New Yorker.

He joins me in the New Yorker office.

Hi, Nathan.

Hi, Debra.

So Singer wrote literally hundreds of stories and dozens of them were published in the magazine.

Why did you instantly go to this one?

You know what? I'll admit it since it's so intimate, just me and you and whoever's downloading.

But I knew I wanted Singer from the start, and then I picked 87 other stories as well,

because I thought like, I'm so jeewy, don't be jeewy.

And I think everyone gets pinned in in these weird ways.

Stories are about people, and why he breaks free from me is he's such a wonderful mix of two worlds.

It's such a New York story and such a stettlesinger's destroyed Yutish world story.

And I think, I don't know, he weaves the two so definitely.

...