Emily Voigt's 'The Dragon Behind the Glass': A Fascinating True Story of Power and Obsession Over the World's Most Coveted Fish

Jose Pohl: Very good book if you are interested in Asian Arowanas. The book arrived fast and as described. I would recommend this book. Thank you.

Canada on May 08, 2023

Michael: AN INTRIGUING AND WELL WRITTEN BOOK.

United States on Apr 08, 2023

Foggygirl: An interesting and somewhat entertaining read, but at times I found the author’s obsession with the fish a bit tiresome.

Canada on Nov 25, 2019

northsylvania: One of the best books I've read lately on the human impact on the environment. I used to be involved in the tropical fish trade on the wholesale and retail end, where one of my bosses was the son of a tropical fish farmer in Florida. I first learned about the impacts of climate change and mass agriculture from field collectors in the 1980s and became an environmentalist through their influence.
I am making this book seem dire; it isn't. Her descriptions of fish enthusiasts are amusing, but she never loses sight of their essential humanity. Her sympathetic personality must have been a passport to a secretive and insular world, and the book is better for it. Nonetheless, it is an important work which should also be read as a paean to the last wild places while showing how vulnerable and ephemeral they are.

United Kingdom on Dec 27, 2017

Zen Raven: Interesting insights into the insane world of fish fanciers, greed, criminal elements in trading in globally endangered species in complete deference of biological facts. Most of the real life characters in this book are wealthy, urban east Asian entrepreneurs completely out of touch with the natural world that produced the blood red Arowana fish for their living room aquariums and those in America; the manifestation of an obsessive compulsive disorder to possess and in some cases, kill others to own.

Canada on Aug 25, 2017

DF: Dragon Behind the Glass by Emily Voigt
This whopper of a fish yarn, is bolstered by intensive and revealing research. It’s a fast-paced narrative spun by an intrepid young writer, Emily Voigt, who searches for the elusive, near mythical Asian Arowana. Voigt’s quest criss-crosses 16 countries—from the Bronx in the U.S. to the wilds of Borneo and the Amazon jungle. In her travels, she encounters characters that could be right out of central casting. Colorful, often predictable, sometimes self-serving and devious, the retinue includes guides, traders, poachers and Arowana authorities, and similarly obsessed tropical fish fanciers.The line between villains and the good guys, is often blurred.

Pulsing with charm and wit, “Dragon” nonetheless has its darker moments of disillusion and disappointment. Voigt sounds a timely and urgent endangered species alert that hopefully will bear consideration by anyone concerned with the plight of our planet. The book finds me so caught up in the pet fish frenzy, that I’ve planned a visit to the Boston Aquarium to meet the Arowana, up-close and personal—but not too close, as they are known to bite.

DF - NH

United States on Aug 28, 2016

Zen Faulkes: The Dragon Behind the Glass is part exposé, part travelogue, part scholarship, and part descent into madness. It’s a combination as addictive as a skillfully made desert.

Ahab had a great white whale. Emily Voigt had a great red fish.

Voigt is pursuing the arowana. She first hears the name from a law enforcement who is talking to her about the exotic pet trade in New York. She learns that the arowana is a large fish prized by a certain kind of aquarium owner: usually Asian, male, and rich. The latter is the most necessary feature for many arowana owners, because single individuals are fetching hundreds of thousands of American dollars.

The arowana is the center of an unusual market, often shrouded in secrecy and both threats and acts of violence. Again and again throughout the book, arowana are stolen, smuggled, and fought over, both in the professional and literal sense of the word.

The strangeness of it all is compelling for the reader and Voigt, who ends up pursuing this fish through multiple countries and jungles. She’s accompanied by a memorable set of other people, who I found myself constantly googling to see by the time I reached the second...

United States on Aug 10, 2016

Alex Tee: An easy and very interesting read. Although I felt it was a bit unsporting of her to say outright that the Arowana were ugly, miserable looking fish.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. All in all I enjoyed it.

United Kingdom on Aug 04, 2016

L. A. Rudary: I came to know about this book via an event that my husband attended at his office; my husband works with the author's husband. This type of expository writing is my absolute favorite way to consume non-fiction and I have found over the years that journalists are masters at it because they combine excellent factual research with an innate talent for story telling. This is much more than a book about a fish. The book is about an entire fish trade, the hobby of fish-keeping in general, a fantastic travelogue, with a bunch of current and historical facts that range from Aristotle, to early Western naturalists, to the current way the world regulates endangered species. But it is also a book about a fish, albeit a very interesting fish.

I thought the story quite captivating, and found myself referring to maps of Southeast Asia and highlighting certain tidbits for further exploration. It essentially reads like a great piece in the New Yorker, but longer and as such, more satisfying. It also exposed some glaring flaws in my knowledge base about that area of the world, which is good because in reading this book, I have found other books to read.

United States on Jun 09, 2016

jsampson: I like books about the intersection of fish and society--books like Cod, Season of the Gar, and Snakehead a Fish out of Water. Also, Heiko Bleher is an interesting "character." Additionally, I am very interested in Osteoglossiformes including the Asian Arowana. I was excited to learn of this book and ordered it soon after it was available.
But the introduction to this book is very depressing; describing a brutal robbery/murder where the items taken were Asian Arowanas. People are victims of robberies all the time; countless people have been killed for the money in their pockets, so why is it surprising that someone would be killed for valuable livestock? And the way the author/editor framed the introduction is so sad--telling it from the point of view of the victim's father. My heart goes out to the victim's father.
I thought the book improved as it went along. The author's point of view evolves as she immerses herself in the fish world. I also admire her bravery and perseverance during her trips into the "wild."
As far as Heiko Bleher--I never realized he was such an egotist, but as the author says in the epilogue; most things he says are based on a kernel of truth. And...

United States on Jun 07, 2016