The Fly Trap

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 Sjöberg’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, Sjöberg 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 René Edmond Malaise, inventor of the Malaise trap. From the everyday to the exotic, The Fly Trap revels in the wonders of the natural world.