On one such pre-christmas session on a well-known website I ended up purchasing The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg. Originally published about a decade ago it has only recently been translated into English.
Sjöberg is a collector of hoverflies on an island in the Swedish archipelago off Stockholm, and this hobby is the starting point of a beautifully written musing about life and the nature of obsession, all woven around a biography of the Swedish entomologist, René Malaise (him of the trap).
This was a good read and I could really relate to the sense of feeling at one with a particular place, where the seasonal nuances of nature and one's understanding of them give the observer a deep sense of calm and satisfaction.
Malaise was someone I knew nothing about, and this brief biography gives a real sense of the man himself and his rather amazing life. From his heyday in the 1930s to his later obsession with Atlantis.
Anyway, one to recommend.
I've just finished reading this, what a charming and eccentric book! Agree that he's good at describing the pleasures of getting lost in watching hoverflies.
ReplyDelete