Giovanni Boccaccio 
The Decameron 

Inspired by the Black Plague that devastated Europe in the mid-1300s, Boccaccio’s collection of tales is an enormously influential literary masterpiece with a sly humor and irreverence that will appeal to modern readers. In the hopes of avoiding the plague, a group of ten wealthy young men and women decamp to a country villa on the outskirts of Florence. Once there, they decide to amuse themselves with a storytelling competition of sorts, with each attendee offering one tale each day for a period of ten days. The stories are by turns ribald, tragic and everything in between.