Crows and ravens inhabit the deepest caverns of our human souls. And if you pay attention, you will find them throughout human history in thousands of stories from prehistoric cave paintings to the hit series Game of Thrones.
No matter how we try to pigeonhole them, typecast them as a shadow, a devil or an unreliable antagonist, ravens and crows are so clever and agile that they manage to escape our reductionist gaze time and time again.
Reading through thousands of years of stories, I could conclude that no story features a real raven, crow, or magpie; that in every story we are looked at by a human in a bird costume, or even more so, that we actually only see ourselves.
But look we will. This book is a collection of weird and amazing stories that show our storied ravens and crows from many suprising angles. And what about those birds themselves? They flew away long ago. What they think of this whole human hubbub, or whether it thinks anything at all, we will never know. So we dream up stories of white ravens and three-legged crows, of shapeshifting witches, clever thieves, all seeing spies and amicable scoundrels.
A Black Mirror: A love-and-hate story about the age old relationship between man and bird
This book-to-be is a prototype of a non-fiction illustrated book about all things 'Corvid'. It will be filled with both fabled and little known stories, scientific fact and - of course - full page illustrations. It will range from the ancient to the contemporary, tracing myths, stories and legends in which our black feathered companions warn us, trick us and - mostly by accident - help us.
