Fishing in Utopia

Description

Andrew Brown’s Fishing in Utopia is part autobiography and part social analysis of Swedish society outside Stockholm from the years of socialism to the liberal government of today. The urge of nature brings Brown back to Sweden in 2005 and he is disappointed to find it is not the country he remembered from living there. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Sweden’s social democratic model was the envy of every country in Western Europe. From the outside, at least, it appeared to be a prosperous, generous, egalitarian country that took care of its employees, operated a wide-ranging welfare system and offered shelter to immigrants, from Iran and the Middle East to the former Yugoslavia and Chile. It had a stable industrial economy that prized energy conservation and the environment. How could it fail? Brown gives his own answers and idea, and although some details can be questioned, it is still a well-informed and entertaining introduction to Sweden; yesterday and today.