The Decameron Project

29 New Stories from the Pandemic

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A stunning collection of new fiction previously published as The Decameron Project and originally commissioned by The New York Times Magazine as the COVID-19 pandemic first spread across the world, from twenty-nine authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kushner, Colm Tóibín, Charles Yu, and more.

When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it...

In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron: 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 2020, the editors of The New York Times Magazine worked to create a collection of stories written just as the pandemic first swept the globe. How might new fiction from some of today’s finest writers help us memorialize and understand the unimaginable? And what could be learned about how this crisis will affect the art of fiction?

These Stories from Quarantine by twenty-nine authors vary widely in texture and tone. The work is a historical tribute to a moment unlike any other in our lifetimes, offering perspective and solace to the reader now and in the uncertain future.

Table of Contents:

“Preface” by Caitlin Roper

“Introduction” by Rivka Galchen

“Recognition” by Victor LaValle

“A Blue Sky Like This” by Mona Awad

“The Walk” by Kamila Shamsie

“Tales from the LA River” by Colm Tóibín

“Clinical Notes” by Liz Moore

“The Team” by Tommy Orange

“The Rock” by Leila Slimani

“Impatient Griselda” by Margaret Atwood

“Under the Magnolia” by Yiyun Li