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EELS: you either love ’em or hate ’em. Well, perhaps few people have such strong feelings about eels, but this book should change that. Prosek’s account of 11 years spent in pursuit of “the world’s most mysterious fish” is both enthralling and appalling.

What started as an investigation into where eels spawn evolved into something part-travelogue, part-anthropological study, part campaign to save the eel. The eel’s story is remarkable, and so are Prosek’s tales of eel people. We meet Ray, who rebuilds a giant stone eel trap in the Catskill Mountains near New York, only to see his eels flushed…

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