Wednesday 21 April 2010

Fishing in Utopia

If you'd like to know more about Swedish culture, I strongly recommend this book - Fishing in Utopia by Andrew Brown. Written in 2008, it is about an Englishman's experience of living in Sweden. In the 70's he moved to Sweden to be with his Swedish girlfriend, then wife. Sweden was a Utopia for him - a welfare state that looked after its citizens. Unfortunately, his marriage didn't work out and he moved back to England, where he became a successful journalist on The Independant.

Decades later, he decided to visit Sweden again to see if the Utopian future became true. Did the future everyone believed in then,actually come true? Or did the future disappear?

A great read. A fantastic way of describing a Sweden that was, and the Sweden of today. He tackles the small issues such as fishing in fresh-water lakes and the big issues such as what does it mean to be Swedish in the 21st century.

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