There are only three topics: love, death and flies. As long as a person has existed, he is constantly accompanied by this knowledge, this fear of them, the awareness of their presence. Let others deal with the first two phenomena. I’ll take on flies - they are better than people, with the exception of women.

Lucy, the heroine of Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia,” was once lucky enough to read the story-spell “How to cleanse and delight the soul.” The girl immediately forgot the plot, but from then on she liked only books that were just as bright and kind. There are very few of them in general, especially in modern literature, but “Malaise’s Trap, or About the Happiness of Living in Captivity of an Unusual Passion, Flies and the Whims of Fate” is a rare example of a work of this kind. In form, this is an ironic and autobiographical story about the ability to read nature and the psychology of the collector. Fredrik Sjöberg, an expert and lover of hoverflies, writes the story of the life, discoveries and adventures of another Swedish entomologist, René Malaise (1892-1978). He is famous for many of his discoveries and expeditions, including to Kamchatka, although today his name is associated primarily with a trap of a special design that he invented. In essence, “Malaise’s Trap” is a cure for fatigue, depression and joylessness. This book has received many awards in Sweden, is regularly republished and translated into German, French, Spanish, Norwegian and other languages.