Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio | PenguinRandomHouse.com

About Decameron

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron was the first great masterpiece of European storytelling; this brilliant new translation by J. G. Nichols faithfully captures its timeless vitality in readable and natural English.

In the summer of 1348, with the plague ravaging Florence, ten young men and women take refuge in the countryside. There they entertain one another for ten days with tales of love, death, and deception, featuring a host of characters from lascivious clergymen and mad kings to devious lovers and false miracle-makers. Named from the Greek for “ten days,” the Decameron draws on ancient mythology, historical events, and everyday life, blending them into a treasury of tragic, comic, and outrageously bawdy stories that have influenced writers and entertained readers for more than six centuries.

About Decameron

In the summer of 1348, with the plague ravaging Florence, ten young men and women take refuge in the countryside, where they entertain themselves with tales of love, death, and corruption, featuring a host of characters, from lascivious clergymen and mad kings to devious lovers and false miracle-makers. Named after the Greek for “ten days,” Boccaccio’s book of stories draws on ancient mythology, contemporary history, and everyday life, and has influenced the work of myriad writers who came after him.

J. G. Nichols’s new translation, faithful to the original but rendered in eminently readable modern English, captures the timeless humor of one of the great classics of European literature.

A brilliant new translation of the work that Herman Hesse called “the first great masterpiece of European storytelling.”

About Decameron

In the summer of 1348, with the plague ravaging Florence, ten young men and women take refuge in the countryside, where they entertain themselves with tales of love, death, and corruption, featuring a host of characters, from lascivious clergymen and mad kings to devious lovers and false miracle-makers. Named after the Greek for “ten days,” Boccaccio’s book of stories draws on ancient mythology, contemporary history, and everyday life, and has influenced the work of myriad writers who came after him.

J. G. Nichols’s new translation, faithful to the original but rendered in eminently readable modern English, captures the timeless humor of one of the great classics of European literature.

A brilliant new translation of the work that Herman Hesse called “the first great masterpiece of European storytelling.”

About Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) was an Italian author and poet who has long been honored—along with Petrarch and Dante—as one of the three fathers of Italian literature.

About Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) was an Italian author and poet who has long been honored—along with Petrarch and Dante—as one of the three fathers of Italian literature.

About Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) was an Italian author and poet who has long been honored—along with Petrarch and Dante—as one of the three fathers of Italian literature.