The New York Times magazine recently published a Decameron for our plague times. The  29 free short stories were written by some of today’s most acclaimed writers. The project editor wrote:

Inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” a 14th-century collection of tales told by a group of 10 characters taking shelter in an Italian villa during the Black Plague, this [collection] features stories from Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Téa Obreht, Karen Russell, Tommy Orange, Yiyun Li and others. The so-called Decameron Project is the first time in the magazine’s modern history that an entire issue is devoted to new fiction.

You can read the stories online here. And also listen to recordings of two stories read aloud by Tommy Orange and Edwidge Danticat here.