New YorkerestEssential reads from every New Yorker issue

May 15, 1948

The New Yorker cover for May 15, 1948

Featured Pick

fiction

Symbols and Signs

Vladimir Nabokov

Short story about an aged Russian couple going to pay their insane son a visit on his birthday.

More picks from this issue

a reporter at large

One of the Very Small Ones.

E. J. Kahn