’I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream. Actually, I can’t remember us speaking at all. Maybe because we never did.’

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it’s born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe – a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water. It lives a solitary life, hiding from both light and science, for ten, twenty, fifty years, before migrating back to the sea in the autumn, morphing into a silver eel and swimming all the way back to the Sargasso Sea, where it breeds and dies.

And yet . . . There is still so much we don’t know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel’s metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don’t know exactly why.

What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us.

This is the basis for The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson’s quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature.

Through the exploration of eels in literature (Günter Grass and Graham Swift feature, amongst others) and the history of science (we learn about Aristotle’s and Sigmund Freud’s complicated relationships with eels) as well as modern marine biology (Rachel Carson and others) we get to know this peculiar animal. In this exploration, we also learn about the human condition, life and death, through natural science and nature writing at its very best.

Following the success of his first novel Dahab Chris Bean in this second book allows his basic geological training to give credibility to a story of the catastrophic events that overwhelm the planet in 2050. His passion and thrill for adventure combined with a much-travelled life while pursuing his profession as a fisherman and fisheries consultant has given him an insight into situations both harsh and beautiful. In this novel he makes no concessions while depicting the scene of utter desperation in which the main characters find themselves. Using love and hope together as he has done in his own life he shows how to turn around a situation of almost nothing into a viable future. Married and with grown up children and young grandchildren he lives on the Lizard Peninsular in Cornwall. Apart from his fishing activities he is an avid painter and runner in the local Hash House Harriers.

The year is 1973 and changes are afoot in Great Yarmouth and Brokencliff-on-Sea as the New Year comes in with bang! Return to a simpler time when family holidays at the seaside were still fun and electronic devices had never been heard of. The only sound that was heard was the gentle lapping of the waves, the gulls circling above, and the trot of the horse's hooves along the promenade and music from the funfairs.