Saving Species: Dialectics of Environmental Stewardship in Maja Lunde’s Bienes Historie and Przewalskis Hest

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article offers a critical investigation of Norwegian author Maja Lunde’s novels Bienes historie and Przewalskis hest . By exploring Lunde’s dramatisation of species conservation, I argue that the novels embody a vision where human stewardship, control and knowledge provide ways of averting ecological collapse. Yet closer inspection of Lunde’s work reveals that the texts also undermine faith in human mastery and environmental stewardship by foregrounding animal bio-resistance and human vulnerability in the face of ecological collapse. By negotiating between these two stances, Lunde demonstrates literature’s potential to provoke reflection around, and expose seductive ideas about, human mastery and techno-scientific solutions to environmental problems.