The purpose of this paper is to show the similarities between two authors, who both have been very successful in Italy and abroad. They are the 14th century writer Giovanni Boccaccio and the contemporary author Andrea Camilleri. I compare five short stories by Camilleri published in his books Gran circo Taddei and La regina di Pomerania and five short stories from Decameron. My aim is to show that they, although more than 600 years apart, have a common angle of approach when it comes to describing how women, seemingly subordinate and compliant, not rarely manage to achieve their aim even if it is trivial, low and not at all focused on changing the world. I also want to elucidate the fact that both writers not rarely let their female characters act as accomplices, that there is a female solidarity between them and that they seem to hav an energy and vigour that men seem to lack. The man on the other hand is often described as weak, as a false authority, who changes into a tool, a diversion in the hands of the woman. Besides this I make an analysis of the "false" short story by Boccaccio, Antonello da Palermo, written by Camilleri to see if it can fall into the genre of rewriting of classical works, which is typical of postmodernism, simply if it fulfills the criteria of such a rewriting.