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.
