Shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Book Shop Literary Prize
'This is one of those special books . . . Even if it were only a book about eels, it would be wonderful.' Sunday Times
'What a joy! Patrick Svensson's sinuous weaving of natural history, philosophy, psychology and autobiography is as compelling and rewarding as a silver eel's return to the Sargasso Sea. I loved every moment.' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
I can't recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream. Actually, I can't remember us speaking at all. Maybe because we never did.
The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it's born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe - a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water. It lives a solitary life, hiding from both light and science, for ten, twenty, fifty years, before migrating back to the sea in the autumn, morphing into a silver eel and swimming all the way back to the Sargasso Sea, where it breeds and dies.
And yet . . . There is still so much we don't know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel's metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don't know exactly why.
What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us.
This is the basis for The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson's quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature.
Through the exploration of eels in literature (Günter Grass and Graham Swift feature, amongst others) and the history of science (we learn about Aristotle's and Sigmund Freud's complicated relationships with eels) as well as modern marine biology (Rachel Carson and others) we get to know this peculiar animal. In this exploration, we also learn about the human condition, life and death, through natural science and nature writing at its very best.
As Patrik Svensson concludes: 'by writing about eels, I have in some ways found my way home again.'
'What a joy! Patrick Svensson's sinuous weaving of natural history, philosophy, psychology and autobiography is as compelling and rewarding as a silver eel's return to the Sargasso Sea. I loved every moment.' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
'Captivating . . . The Gospel of the Eels is, in the end, not really about eels but about life itself . . . Mr. Svensson mixes chapters about the eel's natural history - or, rather, the history of clumsy human attempts to understand it - with finely observed autobiographical vignettes devoted to his own childhood memories of eel-fishing with his father. From these memories, saturated with intense, sensory detail, Mr. Svensson's father emerges as a creature as magical and determined as any eel from the Sargasso Sea . . . Mr. Svensson's book is . . . full of stories and of a size just right, the size only memory and love can make: a place where secrets will always remain secrets and grief dissolves into the shimmering waters of the lake outside, the author's own Sargasso Sea, forever stocked with shiny eels, all within easy reach - yet not.' Wall Street Journal (USA)
'The Gospel of the Eels is the great fable of the identity age . . . It is about the identity of the eel, about globalization and about faith, and - though a small book - also about family and nature.' Die Welt (Germany)
'The author is brilliant at summarising one of the biggest riddles in marine biology, over which even Aristotle and Freud lost their sleep. Following eels and being surprised by their almost magical ability to slither out of the nets of science also means thinking about human knowledge and its limitations . . . A literary sensation.' La Stampa (Italy)
