Fredrik Sjoberg's Swedish bestseller about summer, islands and finding happiness in the little things. Every summer there are a number of nights, not many, but a number, when everything is perfect. The light, the warmth, the smells, the mist, the birdsong - the moths. Who can sleep? Who wants to? Most people do, it seems. As for me, I'm on the verge of tears from happiness, and I wander around on the island till dawn and dream and think that summer nights are our most under utilized natural resource. A mesmerizing web of associations, The Fly Trap begins with Fredrik Sjoberg's own experiences collecting hoverflies on a remote island in Sweden. His curiosity about the inventor of his fly trap leads him to rediscover the extraordinary life of a near-forgotten Naturalist, Rene Malaise. The tale that Sjoberg unravels - of heroic expeditions to Burma and the wilderness of Kamchatka, of lost loves and unexpected treasures - leads him to reflect on life itself, on the natural world and how we learn to interpret it, on slowness, freedom and the bliss of limitation. "Charming, witty and original... a sly challenge to virtually every contemporary orthodoxy. " (Guardian). "Delightful, at once informative and often humorously digressive... a humane man of wide-ranging curiosity, Sjoberg writes with infectious passion. " (Independent). "Its joy lies in Sjoberg's loose-limbed prose... at once whimsical and yet laden with erudition and a deep feeling for the natural world and our place in it. " (Financial Times). "I often return to The Fly Trap, it remains close to my heart. The minute observations from nature that reveal sudden insights into one's life. Sometimes I almost think that he wrote it for me. " (Tomas Transtromer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature). "Subtle, convincing... Sjoberg thrives in the indistinct boundary between science and literature. " (New Scientist). "A quirky tapestry... an enjoyable if wayward tale. " (Ecologist). Fredrik Sjoberg collects hoverflies on the island Runmaro, in the archipelago east of Stockholm. He is also a literary critic, translator, cultural columnist and the author of several books including The Art of Flight and The Raisin King, which form a trilogy with The Fly Trap.