“We need enigmas,” Patrik Svensson, the Swedish journalist who authored this year’s most surprising sensation, has said. His book is full of them. For centuries, eels have baffled the world’s greatest minds. Aristotle pondered them. A teenage Freud dissected them for a month in a fruitless search for their testicles. No scientist has seen the creatures procreate or give birth. When he was younger, Svensson and his working-class father would fish for them at night—scenes he poetically recalls in more personal chapters that mystically echo the scientific history and explain his own fascination, which so many have since come to share.
Buy Now: The Book of Eels on Bookshop | Amazon
More Must-Reads From TIME
- Taylor Swift Is TIME's 2023 Person of the Year
- Meet the Nation Builders
- Why Cell Phone Reception Is Getting Worse
- Column: It's Time to Scrap the Abraham Accords
- Israeli Family Celebrates Release of Hostage Grandmother
- In a New Movie, Beyoncé Finds Freedom
- The Top 100 Photos of 2023
- Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time
