Fiction editor Deborah Treisman talks to George Saunders about his new book, “Tenth of December”: http://nyr.kr/Wprlav

Photograph: Damon Winter/The New York Times/Redux

Read new fiction by Tessa Hadley, featured in this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/WZcseQ

Read Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “Year’s End,” a short story about an Indian-American college student meeting his stepmother and stepsisters who have moved to the United States from India: http://nyr.kr/WVDlSD

Cressida Leyshon talks to Thomas Pierce, whose story “Shirley Temple Three,” appears in this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/VKUFXQ

New fiction by Steven Millhauser, featured in this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/YrwMLa

On this month’s fiction podcast, Hisham Matar, whose story “Naima” appeared in the magazine last year, reads “Shakespeare’s Memory,” by Jorge Luis Borges (translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley).

Listen to Matar read “Shakespeare’s Memory,” and discuss it with our fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, and then click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/THToAC

In this week’s issue, read Nobel Prize-winner Mo Yan’s story “Bull”. Here, a conversation with the author’s translator, Howard Goldblatt. 

New fiction in this week’s issue from Nobel Prize-winner, Mo Yan.

Great writers hit us over the head because they present characters whose imaginary lives have real consequences (at least while we’re reading about them), and because they see the world in much the way we do: complicated by surface and subterranean feelings, by ambiguity and misapprehension, and by the misalliance of consciousness and perception. Writers who want to understand why the heart has reasons that reason cannot know are not going to write horror tales or police procedurals. Why say otherwise? …make no mistake: good commercial fiction is inferior to good literary fiction in the same way that Santa Claus is inferior to Wotan. One brings us fun or frightening gifts, the other requires—and repays—observance.

Continue reading Arthur Krystal on genre vs. literary fiction.