The Gospel of the Eels

A captivating natural science memoir, unravelling the many mysteries of the European eel and the author's complex relationship with his father.

'This is one of those special books . . . Even if it were only a book about eels, it would be wonderful.' – Sunday Times

'I never thought I would see myself in an eel, until I read Svensson's beautiful book, in which he anthropomorphizes eels and shows how mysterious they are, and how little we know about them. It's a beautiful book that makes you realize that the eel is our cousin – we are the eel, and the eel is us.' - Michaela Coel

'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. Born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, it travels on ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe – a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms into a glass eel and then a yellow eel before wandering 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. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don't know exactly why.

In The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson explores his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, and 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 and the history of science, as well as modern marine biology, we get to know this peculiar animal and, in turn, learn about the human condition, life and death, through nature writing at its very best.