If you are still on holidays or about to pop off for a few days before the ‘back to school’ period, and are looking for a good book to read – perhaps one that titillates with stories of abbots cavorting with young ladies- then I can heartily recommend The Decameron, which does all that, and more.
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron was one of the first literary masterpieces of the Renaissance. It is set in a villa outside Florence, at the height of the Bubonic Plague. Seven women and three men flee the Plague, ensconce themselves in a villa and spend ten days flirting, philosophising and debating. It originally came to my mind in May 2020, the third month of the COVID lockdown as I searched for templates for what the post-COVID world might look like.
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