The Gospel of the Eels by Patrik Svensson: book review

The Gospel of the Eels (2019) is a detailed account of the European Eel (Anguilla anguilla) from its birth place in the Sargasso Sea, its migration route of thousands of kilometres, its fascinating long life, and back to its breeding ground.

The author begins and ends with his father; father and son eel fishing.

The eel lives a tranquil life except when it begins looking for a mate, from the age of 15-30 years. The eel is enigmatic: ‘No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one has seen an eel fertilize the egg of another eel; no one has managed to breed European eels in captivity.’

As the author says, ‘how deeply some truths are hidden.’ Eels are ‘existential. An eel becomes what it needs to be when the time is right.’

Given that so much is unknown, the author attempts to put everything in context in an anatomical, social, and historical account.

He tells of 27-year-old Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt (1877-1933) who set off in the steamship ‘Thor’ in 1904 ‘to find the birthplace of the eel’ and again in 1913 in the schooner ‘Margarethe’ and yet again from 1920-1921 in the schooner ‘Dana.’ He tells of how Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wanted to understand the sexuality of the eel, which led to his legacy of work on the hidden sexuality of humans.

The author ends with the potential gradual extinction of the eel.

This is an easy-to-read book on the mysterious, strange eel and its life cycle, starting and ending at the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a scientific story, and also a poignant memoir of a shared passion. Well-written, beautifully evocative, and revealing so much that the wriggling slimy fish becomes almost as loveable as the clown fish in the 2003 animated movie ‘Finding Nemo.’

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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