In 2025, Austria celebrates the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss Jr., Austria's famous Waltz composer.

Born into the legendary Strauss family, he composed beautiful pieces like the Blue Danube Waltz,

which soared to fame during his 1872 American tour.

In 2025, Vienna will host a year-long extravaganza to celebrate this legacy.

So join them and discover the magic of the waltz throughout the city.

Learn more at austria. info slash Strauss.

Thank you. This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this week's episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear David Saloy read his story, Plaster,

from the December 9th, 2024's Voice will hear David Saloy read his story, Plaster,

from the December 9th, 2024 issue of the magazine.

Soloy is the author of six books of fiction, including All That Man Is, which won the

Plimpton Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016,

Turbulence, and Flesh, which will be published in April of 2025.

Now here's David Saloy.

Plaster.

There's some sort of hold-up.

Every day they expect to fly out, and every day they are told it will be another 24 hours.

They're staying in a hotel with a swimming pool. It's not really hot enough for swimming. It's not

quite pool weather. It's like 75 or something. Still, they spend most of the day poolside.

There isn't anything else to do. The plastic sun loungers next to the

pool face those towers, those three towers that look like spikes pointing at the sky with a few

...