Reidar Müller and Sigbjørn Lilleeng - Selected Title Authors
We are happy to present our selected title author Reidar Müller. He has written Life is Dangerous! The Amazing Story of the Evolution of Life from Bacteria to You (original title: Livet er livsfarlig! Den utrolige historien om livets utvikling fra bakterier til deg). The book is illustrated by Sigbjørn Lilleeng, and it is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the autumn 2024. The book is also nominated for the 2024 Brage Prize.
What is your book about?
The book is about Liv and Iggy who go time travelling through the history of the earth. On this trip, they meet lots of strange animals from which we are descended, and in a way that is the plot of our entire story: Our body’s 3,500 million-year-old story. Because did you know that your spinal column originates from a small fish-like thing that lived 500 million years ago? Or that our hands and feet come from an aquatic tetrapod that moved onto land? In a way, we humans are made up of an entire zoo. The story has another layer: Because unbelievably, we are sitting here today. Because when our distant ancestors were alive, there were lots of deadly animals that could eat them – and at worst exterminate them! The past is just packed full of dangerous animals! So in the book, you meet spiny spinosaurus, gigantic dragonflies, king-size scorpions and lots of other strange and terrifying creatures. Woven into all this is the wonderful story of human evolution – from bacteria to you. We believe that after you read this graphic non-fiction book, life will never be the same again.
What inspired you to write this book?
We wanted to create an entertaining, funny and academically robust book about an important and existential question: How did humans come about? There are many books about evolution and prehistoric monsters, but there is no book like ours. We are presenting the subject using fact, fiction and humour in a purely graphic non-fiction format. Amongst the multitude of books about prehistory, there is no such book. But we have made one, and our hope is that it will have lots of readers.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
More about the illustrator here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2024 here
