The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio.

As plague ravages Florence, ten young men and women flee to the countryside and pass the days telling stories, and out of their tale-telling Boccaccio built one of the great treasures of European literature.

What it's about

The Decameron gathers a hundred tales told over ten days by a company of young Florentines who have withdrawn to a country villa to escape the Black Death. Each day a theme is chosen, and each member of the party contributes a story, so that the collection ranges across love and lust, wit and folly, cunning and misfortune, tragedy and broad comedy. The tales are peopled by lovers and merchants, clever servants and foolish husbands, saints and scoundrels, drawn with a worldly eye and a superb sense of narrative. Framed by the shadow of the plague, this abundance of human incident feels all the more vivid and alive, a defiant feast of storytelling set against the fact of death waiting beyond the villa walls.

Themes

Boccaccio delights in human nature in all its variety: desire, ingenuity, hypocrisy, generosity, and the endless comedy of people pursuing what they want. Fortune and its reversals turn the plots; intelligence and quick wit are prized above rank or piety. The book takes a frank, unshockable view of sex and love, and a gently sceptical view of pretension and cant. Beneath the entertainment runs a deep humanism, a celebration of earthly life and its pleasures set defiantly against the ever-present fact of mortality, and a conviction that the telling of stories is itself a kind of consolation and survival.

Why it still matters

The Decameron stands among the foundational works of European prose fiction, its influence reaching to Chaucer and far beyond into the whole tradition of the short story. Its storytelling craft, its narrative frame, and its worldly wisdom have inspired writers for centuries and continue to do so. Read now, its tales remain astonishingly fresh and funny, and its portrait of people finding joy and meaning in the face of catastrophe speaks with unexpected force to any age that has known its own upheavals and losses.

Who it's for

Lovers of classic literature, of short stories, and of ribald, humane comedy will find endless riches here. It suits both the reader who wants to sample a single tale at a time and the one who wishes to immerse themselves in a whole world of medieval life. Anyone who enjoys a great story superbly told, and who does not mind a little bawdiness with their wisdom, should make its acquaintance.