The Fly Trap

Fredrik Sjöberg's Swedish bestseller about summer, islands, freedom and boundaries. 
 
'The light, the warmth, the smells, the mist, the birdsong - the moths. Who can sleep? Who wants to?' 
 
Fredrik Sjöberg finds happiness in the little things. Millions of them, in fact. This beguiling bestseller is his unique meditation on collecting hoverflies. It is also about living on a remote Swedish island, blissful long summer nights, lost loves, unexpected treasures, art, nature, slowness, and how freedom can come from the things we least expect. 
 
'Full of charm, a book about how to find meaning in life' Melissa Harrison, The Times, Books of the Year 
 
'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 
 
'Charming, witty and original' Patrick Barkham, Guardian 
 
'Nature writing that can laugh at itself, a real tonic' Gregory Day, Sydney Morning Herald 
 
'Delightful, at once informative and often humorously digressive . . . a humane man of wide-ranging curiosity, Sjöberg writes with infectious passion' Paul Binding Independent 
 
Fredrik Sjöberg collects hoverflies on the island Runmarö, in the archipelago east of Stockholm. He is also a literary critic, translator, cultural columnist and the author of several books including The Art of Flight and The Raisin King, which form a trilogy with The Fly Trap.

Charming, witty and original . . . a sly challenge to virtually every contemporary orthodoxy

Its joy lies in Sjöberg's loose-limbed prose . . . at once whimsical and yet laden with erudition and a deep feeling for the natural world and our place in it

Delightful, at once informative and often humorously digressive . . . a humane man of wide-ranging curiosity, Sjöberg writes with infectious passion

Subtle, convincing . . . Sjöberg thrives in the indistinct boundary between science and literature

A quirky tapestry . . . an enjoyable if wayward tale

Entertaining . . .iconoclastic . . . the writing is whimsical, digressive and pleasingly devoid of anything too weighty or purposeful

Fredrik Sjöberg

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he 
completes a trilogy.

By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is the author's patient alertness to pattern, to telling correspondence.

Delightful, at once informative and often humorously digressive . . . a humane man of wide-ranging curiosity, Sjöberg writes with infectious passion.

Stories just begin. We rarely know where and almost never why. It doesn't matter. Nothing is certain any longer. I just want to shut my eyes, point at random and say, as a sort of experiment, that once, when I was sixteen years old, I spent a whole night singing romantic songs in the top of a pine tree. That's where it may have started. 
 
In this follow-up to The Fly Trap, Sjöberg continues to explore the pleasures and trials of those who spend their time tracing the smallest details of the natural world. In these two tales, he calls on his childhood memories and experience as a hoverfly collector, and follows the trail of long forgotten entomologists before him who left their native Sweden for the United States. From Stockholm to the Grand Canyon, Sjöberg contemplates the richness of life and the strange paths it leads us on.

The Art of Flight

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Praise for The Art of Flight

Digressive, discursive and delightful.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he
completes a trilogy.

By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is th ...

Digressive, discursive and delightful.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he
completes a trilogy.

By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is th ...

Digressive, discursive and delightful.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he
completes a trilogy.

By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is th ...

Books by Fredrik Sjöberg

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Praise for The Art of Flight

Digressive, discursive and delightful.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he completes a trilogy.

By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is th ...

Digressive, discursive and delightful.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he completes a trilogy.

By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is th ...

Digressive, discursive and delightful.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he completes a trilogy.

By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is th ...

Books by Fredrik Sjöberg

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he
completes a trilogy.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he
completes a trilogy.

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he
completes a trilogy.