A beguiling account of one man’s absorption in and by a country. … He writes a terrific travelogue, capturing the grey light on the emptiness of the lakes, birch forests and bogs. The narrative is peppered with pithy observations and memorable characters.Then, in fairly quick succession, there was Paul Binding in the Independent on Sunday,
marvellously seamless fusion of personal memoir and politico-cultural survey … This is a brilliant book, formidably intelligent in its control of complex material yet shining with humanity, and with the old Swedish belief that we all deserve a just, yet kind society.Christina Patterson in the New Statesman:
Fishing in Utopia is a wonderful exploration of a social experiment that did not entirely succeed, and did not entirely fail, and of a country that can stifle with its worthiness but still enchant, and of a man who loved and lost and loved again. It is also a book about learning to write clearly and honestly and well. And a beautiful, poetic, wise lesson in how to do it.And a review in the Daily Telegraph which I am not sure I have got right, so I won’t link to it. Anyway, all this is marvellous (and the New Statesman review has a bonus photo of the author with hair and beard.)
I will post another piece about my travels shortly, but, alas work gets in the way of blogging these days, too.
Your book has also been discovered very quickly by the Swedish papers, and I hope you have seen the reviews in Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet (your book was mentioned on their op ed page).
Yes: I’ll put up translations in a little while. I have so far done Expressen, DN, and Ystads Allehanda, but not the SvD piece.