Reminiscing Swimming Class Struggles

The story in The New Yorker’s November 27, 2023, issue is “Beauty Contest,” by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Steven Snyder. Ogawa was not able to read her story for The Writer’s Voice, but, on a recent episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, the writer Madeleine Thien read and discussed Ogawa’s 2004 story “The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain,” and we wanted to share that episode with you instead. We hope you enjoy it.