This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old
riddle of whether there are only a small number of 'basic stories' in the world. Using a
wealth of examples from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great
literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today it shows that there are seven
archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. But this is only the
prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these
ways and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array
of examples from Proust to detective stories from the Marquis de Sade to E.T. Christopher
Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the
past 200 years and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their
underlying archetypal purpose. Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell
stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's
psychological development over the past 5000 years. This seminal book opens up in an entirely
new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives and will be a
talking point for years to come.
