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WORK TITLE: The History of Bees
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/30/1975
WEBSITE: http://www.majalunde.com/
CITY: Oslo
STATE:
COUNTRY: Norway
NATIONALITY: Norwegian
Married with three children.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 30, 1975; married; children: Jesper, Jens, and Linus.
EDUCATION:Bolteløkka barneskole for elementary school; Ila ungdomsskole for middle school; Fagerborg videregående for high school; University of Oslo, B.A.; M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and media specialist. Kulturmeglene AS, communications adviser, 2006 to present. Worked formerly as a sailing trainee on the Christian Radich sailing ship, 1992-1993; as head of the Amandus Festival in Lillehammer; as a museum educator at the Film Museum; as cinema manager at Frogner Cinema.
AWARDS:Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize, The History of Bees, 2015.
WRITINGS
Children’s Supershow, Home, and Side by Side scriptwriter.
SIDELIGHTS
Maja Lunde is a writer and media specialist and one of the most well-revered Norwegian authors. Lunde was born on July 30th, 1975 and grew up in Bislett in Oslo. She attended Bolteløkka barneskole for elementary school, Ila ungdomsskole for middle school and Fagerborg videregående for high school. Lunde took a gap year before attended college at the University of Oslo. During her gap year she studied sailing on the Christian Radich, a sailing training ship. She entered the University of Oslo in 1996, where she studied literature and psychology. She majored in media and communications with a focus on film and film history.
After graduating from college, Lunde began working as the head of the Amandus Festival in Lillehammer and as a museum educator at the Film Museum. She then worked as a cinema manager at Frogner Cinema. In 2006 she began working as a communications adviser at Kulturmeglene AS, which included duties related to launching Norwegian feature films.
While working at Kulturmeglene AS, Lunde began writing screenplays. In 2009 she took a leave of work to write full-time. Her screenwriting work includes the script for the TV series Children’s Supershow, drama series Home, and comedy series Side by Side. In 2012 she began publishing books. Lunde lives in Godlia in Oslo with her husband and three children.
The History of Bees is Lunde’s first novel for adults. The book tells the story of humankind’s relationship with and dependency on bees. The novel is comprised of three stories. One of the stories is set in the distant past, the second takes place in 2007, and the third is located in an imagined version of the world eighty years from now.
The first story is set in 1851 in Britain. Shopkeeper William Savage is riddled with depression, partially instigated by an irrational longing for approval from a teacher. He has a large family, but instead of supporting his wife and children by focusing on his business, he spends his days in bed, paralyzed by depression. William’s secret interest in naturalism inspires him to design a more efficient beehive than that which currently exists. The new invention pulls him out of his depression and changes the way humans collect honey.
The second story focuses on George, a third-generation Ohio beekeeper in the year 2007. Like William, George is in a state of discontent. He has made his life on beekeeping, and is distraught when his son seems disinterested in pursuing the family business, instead hoping to become a journalist. In this story, the world is just beginning to understand that bees are in danger due to man’s interference. When George’s hives are contaminated with colony collapse disorder, an illness caused by the effects of pesticides on bees, his hives completely collapse. George watches as his lifetime of work is completely upended, and his experience mirrors an affliction that will soon take over the world.
The third narrative tells the story of Tao, a human pollinator who lives in Sichuan, China, in 2098. By now, all of the bees have died out, and the fate of humankind is questionable. Human pollinators like Tao have been tasked with the job of climbing up tree branches, delicately brushing each fruit blossom with a feather dipped in pollen. The work is strenuous and does not seem likely to save humans. Tao hopes that if she works hard enough, she can save her son from a life as a pollinator. When he is swiftly taken away by authorities after mysteriously collapsing, Tao sets out after him, searching desperately throughout an apocalyptic Beijing to retrieve her kidnapped child.
Kim Ode in Star Tribune Online noted Lunde’s “ability to write with a devastating elegance,” while Tori Latham in Atlantic website wrote the book “gains its best footing in the quiet and intimate relationships it depicts between its characters.” Alexander Moran in Booklist described the book as “an unusual, extensively researched, and gripping tale.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, Augusts 1, 2017, Alexander Moran, review of The History of Bees, p. 22.
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2017, review of The History of Bees.
ONLINE
Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ (September 14, 2017), Tori Latham, review of The History of Bees.
Star Tribune Online, http://www.startribune.com/ (August 18, 2017), Kim Ode, review of The History of Bees.
ABOUT
Short Bio
Maja Lunde is one of Norway’s most successful authors on the international stage. She is an educated media specialist with a master’s degree from the University of Oslo and works as an author and screenwriter. She has written nine children’s and young adult books, including “Battle”, “Across the Border” and the series “The Coolest Gang in the World”. She has also written the script for the TV series “Children’s Supershow”, the drama series “Home” and the humor series “Side by Side”, among others. All of these were huge successes. “The History of Bees” (2015) was her first novel for adults. So far, publication rights have been sold in 32 countries and received several prizes, including the prestigious Bokhandlerprisen (Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize). It was the best selling book in any genre in Germany in 2017. Her second novel “Blue”, book two of Lunde’s planned Climate Quartet, was published in October 2017 and is so far sold to 15 territories.
More…
Lunde was born on July 30th, 1975 and grew up in Bislett in Oslo. She went to Bolteløkka barneskole for elementary school, Ila ungdomsskole for middle school and Fagerborg videregående for high school. From 1992-1993, she had a gap year and sailed with the training ship Christian Radich.
In 1996, she started her studies at the University of Oslo, where she first focused primarily on literature, with subsidiary studies in psychology, and wrote a paper entitled Mass Media, Influence and Aggression. She then majored in media and communications with a specialization in film and film history. Her thesis (2001) was a study of director Nils R. Müller and his film writing.
After graduation, she began working as head of the Amandus Festival in Lillehammer, and as a museum educator at the Film Museum. Following that came a job as cinema manager at Frogner Cinema before she started as a communications advisor at Kulturmeglene AS in 2006, where her work included launching Norwegian feature films.
Outside of work, she began writing screenplays, and in 2009 she took leave from work to write full time. She quickly found work as a screenwriter for Children’s Supershow with NRK Super and eventually the TV series Home and Side by Side on NRK1. At the same time, she worked on manuscripts for several feature films.
In 2011, she won Kosmorama’s pitch competition with the script for the dance film Battle, while also starting to work on turning some of her film ideas into books. In 2012, she debuted with the children’s books Children’s Supershow and Across the Border.
After that came the young adult novel Battle and the series The Coolest Gang in the World. Her first novel for adults, The History of Bees, came out in autumn 2015.
Today, Lunde lives in Godlia in Oslo and is married with three children: Linus (b. 2010), Jens (b. 2008) and Jesper (b. 2004).
Maja Lunde
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maja Lunde
Maja Lunde (24799566142) (2).jpg
Born 1975 (age 42–43)
Nationality Norwegian
Occupation Script writer
Novelist
Children's writer
Awards Norwegian Booksellers' Prize
Maja Lunde (born 1975) , is a Norwegian script writer, novelist and children's writer.
She made her literary debut in 2012 with the children's novel Over grensen (no), a thriller set in 1942, where "Sarah" and "Daniel" are Jews trying to escape prosecution from the Nazis during the German occupation of Norway, and find their way to neutral Sweden.[1][2] She was awarded the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize in 2015 for the novel Bienes historie.[3] Bienes historie was published with the title The History of Bees in the United States by Touchstone, a division of Simon and Schuster, in 2017. As script writer she has contributed to the tv series Barnas supershow (no), Hjem (no) and Side om side (no). She graduated from the University of Oslo.[4]
The History of Bees
Alexander Moran
Booklist.
113.22 (Aug. 1, 2017): p22.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The History of Bees. By Maja Lunde. Aug. 2017. 352p. Touchstone, $26 (9781501 161377).
Norwegian children's author Lunde's impressive adult debut jumps between three disparate narrators. First
is William Savage, a depressed English naturalist with a large family, who is reinvigorated when he begins
to research bees in 1852. Then, there is George, a third-generation Ohio beekeeper in 2007, who is
struggling to convince his son to continue the family business. Finally, in China in 2098, when bees are
extinct, and inevitably, humanity is nearly so, there is Tao, who does grueling work as a human-pollinator
and longs for a new life for her family. In short chapters, the text cycles through each narrative at a rapid
pace. While it structurally resembles Ali Smith's How to Be Both (2014), it echoes Hilary St. John Mandeis
Station Eleven (2014). While Mandeis text celebrates human technological innovation, Lunde's focus is on
the delicate symbiotic relationship of humanity and the natural world. This is an unusual, extensively
researched, and gripping tale that tackles a pressing subject with compassion, nuance, and insight.--
Alexander Moran
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Moran, Alexander. "The History of Bees." Booklist, 1 Aug. 2017, p. 22. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501718740/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a39b57ec.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501718740
4/23/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1524520275872 2/2
Lunde, Maja: THE HISTORY OF BEES
Kirkus Reviews.
(July 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Lunde, Maja THE HISTORY OF BEES Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $26.00 8, 22 ISBN:
978-1-5011-6137-7
Three interwoven tales from 1851, 2007, and 2098 tell the story of our dependency on bees.Norwegian
author Lunde puts imagination and research to work in this message-driven novel set in a gloomy past, a
doomed modernity, and a dystopian future. Nineteenth-century British shopkeeper William Savage suffers
from debilitating depression but finally gets out of bed when his children inspire him to try to build a better
beehive. In 2007, a stubborn Ohio beekeeper named George desperately tries to interest his more
academically oriented son, Tom, in the family business, even as environmental changes begin to impact its
operation. In 2098, a young mother named Tao labors with her husband and everyone else in China,
standing in the branches of fruit trees pollinating buds by hand. In just three years, her 5-year-old son will
also be funneled into this physically debilitating and mindless work. She dreams of giving him an education
and a better life, but instead, on their one Day of Rest in six months, he is catastrophically and mysteriously
injured, then spirited out of town by the authorities. Tao's quest to find her son and understand what
happened to him will ultimately tie the three stories together, as does the theme of the bond between parent
and child, one generation to the next. Illuminating if not much fun.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Lunde, Maja: THE HISTORY OF BEES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497199825/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f29bb37c.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497199825
Review: 'The History of Bees,' by Maja Lunde, is about chemistry, both agricultural and familial
FICTION: A Norwegian novel explores a dark future without bees, as well as the struggle among parents and children.
By KIM ODE Star Tribune AUGUST 18, 2017 — 10:36AM
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“The History of Bees” is not really the history of bees. This becomes clear on the first page, a chapter titled “Tao” and set in a district in Sichuan, China, in the year 2098.
But then comes the second chapter, called “William,” set in England in 1851.
And then the third chapter, “George,” set in Ohio in 2007.
And so Maja Lunde establishes a pattern, sending her readers through the centuries, using these characters to show how better beehives were invented (that’s William), how pesticide-plagued bee colonies began to collapse (George), and how humans might come to be employed as pollinators, creeping among tree branches, delicately brushing each fruit blossom with a feather dipped in pollen (Tao).
In the wrong hands, this tack could seem gimmicky. But Lunde, a Norwegian author and screenwriter, threads a common string through these characters. The novel becomes far less about bees than about family — about how the relationship between parent and child can be passionate, desperate, tragic and uplifting.
Tao wants her young son to gain an education and so rise above life as a pollinator. When he’s whisked away by authorities after mysteriously collapsing, her reckless journey to an apocalyptic Beijing — a consequence of a bee-less, starving world — is wrenching. You want her to find him, but you’re also afraid she will.
Maja Lunde Photo by Oda Berby
ODA BERBY
Maja Lunde Photo by Oda Berby
William is a pathetic shopkeeper, derailed by an irrational need for a teacher’s approval. Depressed and bedridden, he is one day inspired to reclaim the respect of his dissolute son (and the teacher) by inventing a more efficient beehive. You want him to succeed, but you also dread his likely learning that dignity cares little for a business contract.
George is a beekeeper, and he, too, has a wayward son with no interest in taking on the family business — his son wants to be a journalist. When colony collapse disorder strikes George’s hives, he sees a lifetime’s work destroyed, along with the one thing he believed he could share with his son, and he is shattered.
Lunde is best known as a children’s author. This is her first novel for adults, but it’s hard not to think that her immersion in a youthful world informs her ability to write with a devastating elegance about the bond — or lack thereof — between parent and child.
You almost forget that this is, at heart, a novel about bees. So it’s a bit of a surprise when Lunde manages, in the final pages, to pull her common string tight and bring together these far-flung stories in a way that seems not at all contrived.
“A History of Bees” is a dark read, and yet it ends on a wavering note of optimism. It’s been likened to Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 sci-fi novel “Station Eleven,” with good reason.
Lunde has said that, upon its completion, she realized that she has more to say about humanity and nature, and that this is the first in a “climate quartet” of novels. She could become a new voice about the consequences that may lie in our future.
Kim Ode is a features writer at the Star Tribune. On Twitter: @Odewrites
The History of Bees
By: Maja Lunde.
Publisher: Touchstone, 352 pages, $26.
A Novel That Imagines a World Without Bees
Maja Lunde’s climate-fiction debut uses species extinction to ask its human characters: What’s more important, self-interest or sacrifice?
Bees on a blue fence
Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
TORI LATHAM SEP 14, 2017 CULTURE
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The category of literature known as climate fiction—“cli-fi,” as it’s known—has gotten quite crowded in recent years. Even just in the past six months, there’s been Paul Kingsnorth’s Beast, which remains hopeful about impending disaster; Lesley Nneka Arimah’s short story “What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky,” which tackles both ecological concerns and the refugee crisis; and Ashley Shelby’s South Pole Station, which takes on climate-change denial. Into this busy field enters Maja Lunde’s novel The History of Bees. Lunde, a writer of children’s and young-adult books, pieces together a tale that makes the long-term effects of climate change the backdrop for a set of stories about familial relationships, love, and loss.
Following a simple premise—what would happen if bees disappeared?—Lunde’s novel, originally released in Norwegian in 2015, jumps back and forth, across time, between the stories of three beekeepers. The term, it should be noted, is used loosely: There’s William, a British biologist in the mid-1800s; George, a farmer in the contemporary Midwest; and Tao, a young Chinese mother in a bee-less 2098 who spends hours performing manual labor in the fields to make up for the lack of apiformes. All three are dealing with personal problems brought about by the existence—or lack—of bees in their life. But the novel smartly relies limitedly on its ecological-disaster framework and instead gains its best footing in the quiet and intimate relationships it depicts between its characters. At times, it’s easy to forget you’re reading a novel exploring the consequences of a species extinction—instead, you’ve become invested in the lives of the people whose stories it follows.
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Beast Celebrates a Man's Abrupt Return to Nature
This family-drama quality stems from the fact that much of the book takes place before the Collapse, an ambiguous event that occurred over several decades, led to the obliteration of bees, and has greatly depleted the resources they help produce (crops, animal feed, and, in turn, a number of animals). Tao’s plotline is the only one that occurs completely in the post-Collapse world, one in which China’s citizens are forced to hand-pollinate trees, due to the country’s early use of pesticides. “It had paid off to be the ones who polluted the most,” Tao thinks to herself. “We were a pioneer nation in pollution and so we became a pioneer nation in pollination. A paradox had saved us.”
Tao’s story, which opens the novel, is easily the most captivating. It’s also the most urgent, because it takes place after, not before, global disaster. In addition to the stress and exhaustion brought about by her grueling work outdoors, Tao struggles to create a life for her 3-year-old son Wei-Wen, and her constant attempts to provide him the best possible education exasperate her husband Kuan, straining their relationship. When Wei-Wen mysteriously disappears, it pushes Tao and Kuan further apart. Lunde places you in Tao’s head and forces you to feel the emptiness around her:
This thing that was between us had grown to be insurmountably large. … It became almost unbearable to be in the same room. He stirred up the same thoughts again and again. The same two words. My fault, my fault, my fault.
Tao becomes so caught up in blaming herself for her son’s disappearance that she withdraws from those around her. Initially provoked by the ecological disaster, the void she feels deepens because of her lack of connectedness to those around her, and because of her belief that she alone can solve all of the problems—whether minute and personal or huge and systemic—that exist in her world.
If most of Tao’s storyline follows her attempts to discover her missing son, George’s and William’s more closely trace their irascible connections with their children. The difficulty with which the two men attempt to relate to their kids and their kids’ developing hobbies mirrors the trouble they have grasping the realities of a changing world. George, living during the beginning days of the Collapse in the United States, struggles to maintain his bees as he rejects new farming techniques meant to streamline the process of beekeeping. He’s disappointed in his son Tom, who’s recently gone off to college and seems wholly disinterested in his father’s profession, and much more drawn to pursuing a Ph.D. in writing.
Lunde leaves open the possibility of a way of life that values the collective over the individual.
George’s decided unlikability—he’s oblivious to his son’s desires and puts himself above everyone else—is clearly intentional. With his rigid self-centeredness, he serves as a foil for the bees, which are both the novel’s primary symbol and its binding narrative force. In addition to being an integral part of keeping the environment in order, “each tiny insect was subordinate to the greater whole,” as William points out early in the novel, sacrificing an individual identity for collective wellbeing. George is the complete opposite. If his verve for beekeeping drives his life, it also results in the downfall of his relationships. Lunde, in creating this unbearably stubborn character, suggests the tricky balancing act between human self-interest and sacrifice, and shows how parents can sometimes be the ones who struggle with this tension most of all.
The third storyline, William’s, works as a combination of the other two, mingling the sympathy readers may feel for Tao with the contempt they might feel for George. When first introduced, William is immobilized in bed by an overwhelming depression brought about by his lack of scientific achievement. A renewed sense of passion—both for his family and his work—becomes the driving force behind the scientist’s return to life. But, his fixations come at a cost: Determined to make new strides in the world of mid-19th century beekeeping, he becomes blind to those around him. His egocentrism and need for recognition don’t allow him to realize that “a single person’s life, … thoughts, fears, and dreams meant nothing” if they don’t “apply to us all.”
William’s inability to comprehend the communal nature of life, a quality each character shares in some way, is central to the novel’s broader point—that self-interest alone can result in both personal destruction and larger catastrophes that affect those outside of one’s immediate orbit. The book does, however, leave open the possibility of a way of life that values the collective over the individual, as bees do from the day they are born to the day they die.
At times, the moralizing about the environment and humans’ role in global warming can come across a bit heavy-handedly. But increasing awareness of the earth’s fraught future, in the end, is not the main thing the novel is trying to do. Instead, it wants you to consider what it is you feel deeply about—whether that’s achieving fame, standing by traditions, or protecting your family—and then consider whether you would sacrifice those things for the greater good.