The Fly Trap

'Every summer there are a number of nights, not many, but a number, when everything is perfect. The light, the warmth, the smells, the mist, the birdsong - the moths. Who can sleep? Who wants to? Most people do, it seems. As for me, I'm on the verge of tears from happiness, and I wander around on the island till dawn and dream and think that summer nights are our most underutilized natural resource.'

A mesmerising web of associations, The Fly Trapbegins with Fredrik...
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'Every summer there are a number of nights, not many, but a number, when everything is perfect. The light, the warmth, the smells, the mist, the birdsong - the moths. Who can sleep? Who wants to? Most people do, it seems. As for me, I'm on the verge of tears from happiness, and I wander around on the island till dawn and dream and think that summer nights are our most underutilized natural resource.'

A mesmerising web of associations, The Fly Trapbegins with Fredrik Sjöberg's own experiences collecting hoverflies on a remote island in Sweden. His curiosity about the inventor of his fly trap leads him to rediscover the extraordinary life of a near-forgotten Naturalist, René Malaise. The tale that Sjöberg unravels - of heroic expeditions to Burma and the wilderness of Kamchatka, of lost loves and unexpected treasures - leads him to reflect on life itself, on the natural world and how we learn to interpret it, on slowness, freedom and the bliss of limitation.

'I often return to The Fly Trap, it remains close to my heart. The minute observations from nature that reveal sudden insights into one's life. Sometimes I almost think that he wrote it for me.' Tomas Tranströmer winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature