Fishing in Utopia

Fishing in Utopia by Andrew Brown
Publisher: Granta Books, 2009
Sweden and the future that disappeared

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE 2009

In the 1970s Andrew Brown, a misfit young Englishman, moved to Sweden, enticed by the possibility of a cleaner, kinder, more rational future. He married a Swedish woman, learned to fish, and brought up his young son in their makeshift cottage in the woods. But during the 1980s, his marriage and his country fell apart as the temptations of the outside world forced their way in. The prime minister, Olof Palme, was assassinated. The welfare system crumbled. Brown returned home. Twenty years after Palme’s murder, Brown travelled the length of Sweden in search of the country he had loved, and then hated, and now found he loved again.

This is the paperback edition. My design for the hardback is here