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 ask a New Yorker contributor to choose a short story from our archive.

This month, we'll hear the gospel according to Mark by the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories.

The story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle,

and the story of a god allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.

The gospel according to Mark was chosen by novelist Paul Theroux,

who has been contributing short fiction, journalism and essays to the New Yorker since 1979.

His most recent book is a collection of novellas set in India, titled The Elephantus Suite.

Paul Theroux joins me now from the studios of WCAI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Hi Paul. Hi Debra, how you doing? Good.

So the New Yorker published many Borges stories and poems in the late 1960s and throughout the 70s.

I'm wondering what made you choose this story in particular?

I chose this story, I think, for the reason that I value stories and magazines, which was

I knew about Borges. I'd read some of the stories in the 60s,

but you never knew what was coming in the New Yorker. So there's a sense of discovery

when you find a story in a magazine, not one in a book, not one that's been billboarded or advertised,

but just one that you leaf through and you say, oh my goodness, there's a Borges story.

At that time Borges' name appeared at the end of the story, not the beginning. So there was always

this question of who wrote this story. This one particularly struck me. I think it's a very,

very powerful story because it's about religion, about superstition, about belief, about faith,

...