The Art of Flight

Two more tales of memory, nature, travel and collecting from the author of the Swedish bestseller The Fly TrapStories just begin. We rarely know where and almost never why. It doesn't matter. Nothing is certain any longer. I just want to shut my eyes, point at random and say, as a sort of experiment, that once, when I was sixteen years old, I spent a whole night singing romantic songs in the top of a pine tree. That's where it may have started.In this follow-up to The Fly Trap, Sj berg continues to explore the pleasures and trials of those who spend their time tracing the smallest details of the natural world. In these two tales, he calls on his childhood memories and experience as a hoverfly collector, and follows the trail of long forgotten entomologists before him who left their native Sweden for the United States. From Stockholm to the Grand Canyon, Sj berg contemplates the richness of life and the strange paths it leads us on.

“Digressive, discursive and delightful.--Michael Kerr, Telegraph A joy . . . Fredrik Sj”

Digressive, discursive and delightful. -- Michael Kerr Telegraph

A joy . . . Fredrik Sjöberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he
completes a trilogy.

Nature
By his own admission Sjöberg has a "butterfly mind"; the effect of his narrative excursions amounts to a sort of Sebald-lite, albeit without the fictional element. What insures this approach against triviality is the author's patient alertness to pattern, to telling correspondence. -- Nat Segnit Times Literary Supplement

Delightful, at once informative and often humorously digressive . . . a humane man of wide-ranging curiosity, Sjöberg writes with infectious passion.

Independent

Fredrik Sj berg collects hoverflies on the island of Runmar , in the archipelago east of Stockholm. He is also a literary critic, translator, cultural columnist and the author of several books, including The Fly Trap and The Raisin King, which form a trilogy with The Art of Flight.

'Although there is much in this world that is incomprehensible, you can nevertheless discover a meaning as long as you have managed to limit your field of search.' Fredrik Sjberg - collector, romantic, explorer - spends his life tracing the smallest details of the natural world. In these two beautifully wrought tales he meditates on the joy of little things, childhood memories, long-forgotten Swedish entomologists, earthworms, wine-making, the National Parks of the United States, the richness of life and the strange paths it leads us on. 'A joy . . . Fredrik Sjberg's best-selling memoir The Fly Trap marked him as a maestro of the episodic. Here, he completes a trilogy' Nature 'Thoroughly entertaining, beguilingly uncategorizable ... By his own admission Sjberg has a "butterfly mind" ... What insures this approach against triviality is the author's patient alertness to pattern, to telling correspondence' Nat Segnit, The Times Literary Supplement

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