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 Evolution of Knowledge by Nicolò Tucci.

My wife observed that our lot had not improved much with exile.

In Italy, the tyrant had been constantly awake over us.

Here, he was asleep under our feet.

The story was chosen by Thomas Beller, several of whose stories and talk of the town pieces have appeared in The New Yorker.

He's the author of the story collection's seduction theory, the novel, the sleepover artist,

and a book of essays titled How to Be a Man, scenes from a protracted boyhood.

He was also the editor of Open City, and is the creator of the website, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood.

Hi, Tom.

Debra, nice to see you.

So the Evolution of Knowledge was Nicolò Tucci's first piece in The New Yorker, published here in 1947,

and he went on contributing to the magazine until the 70s.

He died in 1999. Did you ever get to meet him in person?

No.

So how did you come across his work?

In the best sense, someone gave me a book, which is The Rain Came Last and Other Stories, which this story appears in.

And I responded to the book. I loved the story collection.

I, by accident, had a second take, kind of behind the backstage glimpse of Tucci,

when I was in the manuscripts, rare books, room in The New York Public Library,

...