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A review by adamskiboy528491
The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic by The New York Times
5.0
When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it. The Decameron is a classic work of Italian literature, written c.1350-53 by Giovanni Boccaccio. In the midst of The Black Death, ten wealthy young Florentines decamp to the countryside with their entourage, & pass their days in storytelling, an attempt to reclaim a world that everywhere is dying. Over ten days, the three young men & seven young women tell a hundred stories, full of generous aristocrats, clever tricks, toilet humour, lustful women, wicked churchmen & lots of illicit sex. Boccaccio himself steps out of the shadows twice (once in the introduction to the fourth day, once in the epilogue) to deliver impassioned, hilarious, self-deprecating, & (in the case of the epilogue) incredibly obscene defences of his work.
The Decameron Project is the 21st-century update of Boccaccio’s familiar work. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, twenty-nine critically-acclaimed authors have written short stories centred during this painful time. Even though this book is an anthology & the stories have no connection whatsoever, each one is their wit & humour to help keep our spirits up at a time like this. Most of these stories are short or really short of bringing out the on-point topics of communication, technology, seclusion, reality, and above all…hope. Each tale fleshes out the lockdown life & takes on new angles to this dystopian-esque world we’re occupying at the moment.
We are all sharing the same nightmare. The one thing we need is to keep the art of fiction to spreading more than the coronavirus. Without our stories, what would do to pass the time?
The Decameron Project is the 21st-century update of Boccaccio’s familiar work. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, twenty-nine critically-acclaimed authors have written short stories centred during this painful time. Even though this book is an anthology & the stories have no connection whatsoever, each one is their wit & humour to help keep our spirits up at a time like this. Most of these stories are short or really short of bringing out the on-point topics of communication, technology, seclusion, reality, and above all…hope. Each tale fleshes out the lockdown life & takes on new angles to this dystopian-esque world we’re occupying at the moment.
We are all sharing the same nightmare. The one thing we need is to keep the art of fiction to spreading more than the coronavirus. Without our stories, what would do to pass the time?