A work of rare intellectual intensity and imaginative power.

The stories of the world’s beginning are not accounts of prehistory or early science, but metaphysical visions. They are narratives through which human cultures have sought to give meaning to existence. Moving across sacred texts — from the Enuma Elish to the Bible and the Qur’an, from the Hindu Vedas to Buddhist and Taoist classics — as well as myths, rituals, and ascetic traditions, Massimo Raveri reflects on how different civilizations have imagined the origin of everything. What emerges is not a catalogue of beliefs, but a meditation on the foundational choices through which cultures conceive of God, humanity, nature, and destiny. Stories of origin speak not only of creation, but also of finitude, suffering, and evil. They reveal whether the world is born from divine will, sacrifice, desire, or play — and how each vision shapes our understanding of life and death. The Dawns of the World is an original essay on myth, meaning, and the human need to imagine a beginning... and an end.