Written in the Kunderian playful style of “lightness of form and heaviness of inquiry,” Karen von Kunes’ debut novel Among the Sinners makes allusions to Boccaccio's novel The Decameron. Like ten young people who flee from plague-ridden Florence to an abandoned mansion in mediaeval times, the ten young ‘sinners’ from various countries hide in “The Decameron,” a former mansion near Boston, hoping