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

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Karin Mahajan read his story, The True

Margaret, from the August 14, 2023 issue of the magazine.

Mahajan is the author of two novels, Family Planning and the Association of Small Bombs,

which won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award in 2017.

Now here's Karin Mahajan.

The True Margaret.

Mira was recalling the tragedy of her first marriage.

Married off to an Indian doctor in 1959, she had moved to London only to discover that her

new husband, Ravi, already had a wife in the city.

Ravi didn't wait long to tell her.

It was the night that Mira and he arrived in London, haggard from that two-day honeymoon

in Jeppor, where an over-enthusiastic bearer woke them every morning at six with Betty.

Then on a connecting flight from Cairo, they had dosed, their heads forming a tent against

the propeller roar, and now in Earl's court, the street pillow empty, safe for murmuring

students and a chestnut cellar with a scratchy voice, they stayed awake into the night.

Ravi showed her around the sparse drafty, top floor flat and plugged in the three-bar

fire.

Then he began speaking to her in a business-like way, a tone she'd never detected before

in his arsenal of charm.

I suppose dear, we might as well discuss the issue at hand, he said, casually he brought

...