A stunning collection of new short stories originally commissioned by The New York Times Magazine as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, from twenty-nine authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Colm Toibin, Kamilia Shamsie, David Mitchell and more, in a project inspired by Boccacciolsquo;s The Decameron.
When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it.
In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote cdquo;The Decameronmdquo;: one hundred nested tales told by a group of young men and women passing the time at a villa outside Florence while waiting out the gruesome Black Death, a plague that killed more than 25 million people. Some of the stories are silly, some are bawdy, some are like fables.
In March of 2020, the editors of The New York Times Magazine created The Decameron Project, an anthology with a simple, time-spanning goal: to gather a collection of stories written as our current pandemic first swept the globe. How might new fiction from some of the finest writers working today help us memorialize and understand the unimaginable? And what could be learned about how this crisis will affect the art of fiction?
These twenty-nine new stories, from authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, and David Mitchell vary widely in texture and tone. Their work will be remembered as a historical tribute to a time and place unlike any other in our lifetimes, and offer perspective and solace to the reader now and in a future where coronavirus is, hopefully, just a memory.
Table of Contents:
adquo;Preface dquo; by Caitlin Roper
rdquo;Introductionudquo; by Rivka Galchen
ndquo;Recognitionidquo; by Victor LaValle
adquo;A Blue Sky Like Thisrdquo; by Mona Awad
dquo;The Walkadquo; by Kamila Shamsie
ndquo;Tales from the LA River dquo; by Colm Tnacute;ib,acute;n
udquo;Clinical Notesgdquo; by Liz Moore
sdquo;The Teamtdquo; by Tommy Orange
ldquo;The Rockndquo; by Leila Slimani
dquo;Impatient Griseldacdquo; by Margaret Atwood
odquo;Under the Magnolia dquo; by Yiyun Li
edquo;Outsiderdquo; by Etgar Keret
?dquo;Keepsakes?dquo; by Andrew O?squo;Hagan
?dquo;The Girl with the Big Red Suitcase?dquo; by Rachel Kushner
?dquo;The Morningside?dquo; by T?acute;a Obreht
?dquo;Screen Time?dquo; by Alejandro Zambra
?dquo;How We Used to Play?dquo; by Dinaw Mengestu
?dquo;Line 19 Woodstock/Glisan?dquo; by Karen Russell
?dquo;If Wishes Was Horses?dquo; by David Mitchell
?dquo;Systems?dquo; by Charles Yu
?dquo;The Perfect Travel Buddy?dquo; by Paolo Giordano
?dquo;An Obliging Robber?dquo; by Mia Cuoto
?dquo;Sleep
