About the book: 1984 / A collection of one hundred short stories, known as "Novellino", created at the very end of the 13th century. At that time, Italian literature in the vernacular was taking its first steps - its history barely lasted half a century. The book “collects several colors of elegant speech, polite or witty answers, examples of generosity and courage that many worthy people showed in past times.” The genre of the short story in Novellino was in the process of becoming, it is still amorphous, its boundaries are unsteady. Only another half century after the creation of Novellino would Boccaccio write The Decameron, and the short story would turn into a classic literary genre. However, the publishers of the 16th century, who returned Novellino to the reader, judging every short story from the heights of the Decameron, did not neglect its modest predecessor.