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 book is his unique meditation on collecting hoverflies on a remote Swedish island. It's about blissful long summer nights, the art of noticing, and how slowing down can reveal unexpected treasures all around us.

Part nature writing, part philosophical musing, The Fly Trap explores lost loves, art, slowness, and how freedom can come from the things we least expect. Charming, witty and refreshingly self-aware, Sjöberg's minute observations from nature reveal sudden insights into life itself. As Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer said: 'I often return to The Fly Trap, it remains close to my heart... Sometimes I almost think that he wrote it for me.'

A humane writer of wide-ranging curiosity, Sjöberg has created nature writing that can laugh at itself - a delightful, informative and humorously digressive meditation on finding meaning in the world around us.