Fishing in Utopia by Andrew Brown
From the 1960s to the 1980s, Sweden's social democratic model was the envy of every country in Western Europe. From the outside, at least, it appeared to be a prosperous, generous, egalitarian country that took care of its employees, operated a wide-ranging welfare system and offered shelter to immigrants, from Iran and the Middle East to the former Yugoslavia and Chile. It had a stable industrial economy that prized energy conservation and the environment. How could it fail? Andrew Brown lived there as a child in the 1960s. Ten years later, he returned: he married a Swedish woman and worked in a timber mill, raising his small son, first of all in a housing estate on the edge of Gothenberg, and then in a makeshift chalet in the forest. Fishing was his passion and his escape from a country and its people that alternately oppressed and fascinated him. He returned to live in England at the beginning of the 1980s, but he kept going back.This book tells his story, and woven into it is the landscape of Sweden, its rivers and forests with their attendant mythology, as well as the workings of a political and social system that seemed, for a decade or so, to have made Sweden into a modern utopia.
Andrew Brown was born in 1955 in London. After writing for the Spectator from Sweden, he returned to London and joined the Independent in 1986 and for the next decade was its religious affairs correspondent, parliamentary sketch writer, and other odd jobs. In 1995 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for the best religious affairs correspondent in Europe. He now writes regularly for the Guardian and contributes to Prospect, Salon, and the New Statesman. His previous books include The Darwin Wars: The Scientific Battle for the Soul of Man (Simon and Schuster 1999) and In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite (Simon & Schuster/Columbia University Press 2003). He lives in north Essex, and is married, with two children.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781862079953 |
| ISBN 10 | 1862079951 |
| Title | Fishing in Utopia |
| Author | Andrew Brown |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Granta Books |
| Year published | 2008-07-01 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Prizes | Winner of Orwell Prize 2009 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |