The Seven Basic Plots

Why We Tell Stories

By: Christopher Booker

Narrated by: Liam Gerrard

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 reveals 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 analyzes 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 5,000 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.

©2004 Christopher Booker (P)2019 Tantor

Well worth your time

This book is more than you may think it is.
It is well worth your time, time well spent, to listen.

Entertaining every minute!

Compelling theory of storytelling explained through a fun run across hundreds titles and thousands of years. Spoiler alerts of course ; )

Absolutely love

I like patterns, and this book is full of the patterns of our literature. Especially liked learning about hamlet and the epic of Gilgamesh. Neat. Easy listen.

Put in the work and it is worth it!

I have read many of the books he discusses. As a non-literary scholar who is just now learning it’s ok to read the same book multiple times, this book provides a framework for thinking about the stories famous and personal we tell. It is long but worth the time if you are always asking yourself after reading the classics, why?!

Worth reading but ...

"Everyone is an hero in his/her book.” With this in mind, I would have given a four-star, but was only taken back by the last few chapters' narrow political views.