Breathtaking in its scope & originality " Seven Basic Plots" examines the basis of story telling in literature film & libretto No one will ever see stories in the same way again This remarkable & 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 & folk tales via the plays & novels of great literature to the popular movies & 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 & why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways & 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 ET Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years & 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 & 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 & will be a talking point for years to come