The Decameron Project 29 New Stories from the Pandemic - Selected by the Editors of the New York Times Magazine

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 Boccaccio's The Decameron.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 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:Preface by Caitlin RoperIntroduction by Rivka GalchenRecognition by Victor LaValleA Blue Sky Like This by Mona AwadThe Walk by Kamila ShamsieTales from the LA River by Colm TóibínClinical Notes by Liz MooreThe Team by Tommy OrangeThe Rock by Leila SlimaniImpatient Griselda by Margaret AtwoodUnder the Magnolia by Yiyun LiOutside by Etgar KeretKeepsakes by Andrew O'HaganThe Girl with the Big Red Suitcase by Rachel KushnerThe Morningside by Téa ObrehtScreen Time by Alejandro ZambraHow We Used to Play by Dinaw MengestuLine 19 Woodstock/Glisan by Karen RussellIf Wishes Was Horses by David MitchellSystems by Charles YuThe Perfect Travel Buddy by Paolo GiordanoAn Obliging Robber by Mia CuotoSleep by Uzodinma IwealaPrudent Girls by Rivers SolomonThat Time at My Brother's Wedding by Laila LalamiA Time of Death, The Death of Time by Julián FuksThe Cellar by Dina NayeliOrigin Story by Matthew BakerTo the Wall by Esi EdugyanBarcelona: Open City by John WrayOne Thing by Edwidge Danticat