The Book of Eels
Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
by Patrik Svensson
The recap
For more than two thousand years, the European eel kept one secret from everyone who tried to pry it loose: nobody had ever seen one breed. Aristotle concluded that eels simply arose from the mud, and generations of naturalists after him dissected specimen after specimen without finding what they were looking for. Patrik Svensson follows this long and peculiar hunt, from ancient philosophers to a young Sigmund Freud bent over his dissecting table, to Danish researchers who crossed the Atlantic chasing ever-smaller larvae toward the Sargasso Sea. Woven between the science are memories of summer nights spent fishing for eels with his father beside a stream near their home, and of the quiet bond the two of them shared without many words. The result is a lyrical blend of natural history and memoir that moves from an animal's baffling migrations to questions about origins, belonging and the limits of knowledge, all while the eel itself slips toward extinction.
Why read it
For readers who like nature writing with a personal heartbeat, and for anyone who enjoys a scientific mystery that still hasn't been fully solved.
Fun facts
- 01
The Swedish original, Ålevangeliet, won the 2019 August Prize for non-fiction, Sweden's most prestigious literary award.
- 02
As a young researcher, Sigmund Freud went hunting for the male eel's sex organs; Svensson wonders whether that frustrating search helped steer Freud toward psychoanalysis.
- 03
The English translation is by Agnes Broomé, and the book also appears in English under the title The Gospel of the Eels.
- 04
The US edition was named one of The Washington Post's notable nonfiction books of the year and a New York Times Editors' Choice.
