Overview

A rare memoir of extraordinary, mesmerizing brilliance--and a Swedish bestseller--by an entomologist fascinated with the natural world and the hidden wonders of life, and which asks: What is it that drives the obsessively curious to exploration and the practice of collecting?Warm and humorous, self-deprecating and contemplative, The Fly Trap is a meditation on solitude, stillness, and the observation of beauty--be it found among insects or in art. Weaving a fascinating web of associations, histories, and personal memories, the book begins with Fredrik Sjoberg's own experience as an entomologist on a tranquil, remote Swedish island and pulls in the tales of past heroic scientific expeditions to Burma and the wilderness of Kamchatka. As confounded by his unusual love of collecting flies as anyone, Sjoberg pauses to reflect on a range of ideas--the passage of time, art, freedom--drawing into dialogue writers such as Bruce Chatwin and D. H. Lawrence, and the lives of collectors such as Rene Edmond Malaise, inventor of the Malaise trap.From the everyday to the exotic, The Fly Trap revels in the wonders of the natural world.

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9781504601474

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Fredrik Sjoberg is an entomologist, literary critic, translator, cultural columnist, and the author of several books. He has written on everything from the history of the environmental movement to the insect collection of the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer. He lives with his family on the island Runmaro in the archipelago east of Stockholm. Thomas Teal has translated many works into English, beginning in the 1970s with The Summer Book and Sun City and more recently The True Deceiver and Fair Play. He also cotranslated Tove Jansson's short stories in The Woman Who Borrowed Memories. He lives in Massachusetts. Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award. He has earned multiple Earphones Awards, including one for his narration of Francisco Goldman's Say Her Name, which was named one of AudioFile magazine's Best Audiobooks of 2011.

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