The Decameron

Giovanni Boccaccio · 1313–1375 · Italy

Originally Il Decameron (Italian)

Why it matters

Ten young Florentines flee the Black Death to a country villa and tell a hundred stories against it: of lust, trickery, luck, and cunning. Storytelling as survival, and the direct ancestor of Chaucer, the novella, and the modern short story.

At a glance

Long but modular: a hundred self-contained tales in plain, worldly prose.