This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine. I'm Deborah

Treisman, 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 third and final continent by Jumpalaheiri, which appeared in the New Yorker in June of 1999.

There's an American flag on the moon boy.

Yes, madam.

A flag on the moon isn't't that splendid? I nodded, dreading what I knew was coming.

Yes, madam. Say splendid.

The story was chosen by Rebecca Mackay, whose published five books of fiction. The Great Believers, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and I have some questions for you which came out last year.

Hi Rebecca.

Hi.

So when I got in touch with you about doing the podcast,

the third and final continent was your immediate first choice.

Yeah.

Why was that?

Well, there were several things.

One is that I read this story when it came out in the New Yorker.

I was 21. I was a young writer and we can get into more detail on this later but really

taught me interesting things about narrative distance and the use of time in fiction. And the other is that

I, while it meant a lot to me at the time it means even more to me now, my father

was an immigrant to this country as a student came to Boston and you know I'm

not a Bengali man but this is a very personal story for me as well.

...