Star Stories by Anthony Aveni

Book Review

Most of us, in the western world, are familiar with the Greek myths associated with our night sky, but there are many more stories in the stars and ways to interpret the constellations. Anthony Aveni has collated many of them from across the world’s cultures in this fabulous book that explores our storied stars.

Here’s the blurb:

Follow an epic animal race, a quest for a disembodied hand, and an emu egg hunt in constellation stories from diverse cultures

We can see love, betrayal, and friendship in the heavens, if we know where to look. A world expert on cultural understandings of cosmology, Anthony Aveni provides an unconventional atlas of the night sky, introducing readers to tales beloved for generations. The constellations included are not your typical Greek and Roman myths, but star patterns conceived by a host of cultures, non-Western and indigenous, ancient and contemporary.

The sky has long served as a template for telling stories about the meaning of life. People have looked for likenesses between the domains of heaven and earth to help marry the unfamiliar above to the quotidian below. Perfect reading for all sky watchers and storytellers, this book is an essential complement to Western mythologies, showing how the confluence of the natural world and culture of heavenly observers can produce a variety of tales about the shapes in the sky.

Each chapter looks at a different constellaion and how different cultures have looked up at those stars and told different stories about them. The seven stars of Pleides are sisters in many countries and Orion is a man in the sky with many different stories associated with him. This book takes you on an international trip around the solar system.

This is an well researched book by a world reknowned astronomer and anthropologist. It’s written in an engaging style and it’s full of really interesting insights into our night sky. If you are interested in the stars and the stories and folklor ethey hold, not just in the west but across the world then I woudl highly recommend this book.

You can buy Athony Aveni’s , ‘Star Stories,’ in all good bookshops.

If you would like to buy a copy online, please consider visiting my page on Bookshop.org where I have gathered some of the books I read and recommend. Here you will find a plethora of myth, legend and folktale.

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Don’t forget to support your local library too and see if they have a copy to borrow.