The Black Death was a plague pandemic which devastated Europe from 1347 to 1352 CE, killing an estimated 25-30 million people. At that time, seven women and three men ran away and sought refuge in a villa near Florence in order to escape the contagion. With each of those participants telling ten stories, Giovanni Boccaccio‘s ‘Decameron’, comprising a hundred stories was born. And now, with the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the globe, a project inspired by Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’, titled ‘The Decameron 2020‘, has been put together.
Shabana Azmi is one of the celebrities who has been invited to read out a story. She says, “This is a project set up by one of the greatest Italian writers Erri De Luca along with director Michael Mayer, where they have got different authors from around the world to write a story about their life during lockdown, because they feel that it should propel people into hearing voices from different parts of the world. I am very happy to be doing this. Professor Tabish Khair, an Indian English author and associate professor in the Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark, who is a writer and columnist, has written the story ‘River Of No Return’, that I am reading. It is a moving and beautiful story and I have already finished recording it.”
Explaining about The Decameron 2020, Erri De Luca explains in a video, “In the current epidemic, some of the world’s writers trade stories written in isolation. Celebrated voices from around the world are added, reading the stories from their sites of quarantine. Director Michael Mayer puts it all together with help from art director Richard Petit. From their respective retreats, an ensemble is born, which can vary—from the rhythm of frenzied tip tap dance, to the syncopation of ragtime, or to the solemn pace of a requiem. Not a single sum or synthesis, here instead is the expansive, feverish imagination of shut-ins. From the four corners of the world, comes this chorus that wants to be a breach and break the siege.”
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