Nature Book Prize for ‘Mouse Life’ by Eva Meijer

The prize for the best Dutch nature book is going to Eva Meijer this year for the book Mouse life. The second Natuurboekenprijs, an initiative of nature organization LandscapenNL, de Volkskrant and the radio program Early birdswas awarded on Sunday morning during a live radio broadcast.

Writer and philosopher Meijer took twenty-five ex-laboratory mice in the house in 2020. In her book she writes about the mice “as if a friendship has been made with them,” said the jury consisting of journalists Jean-Pierre Geelen (Volkskrant) and Merlijn Schneiders (Vroege Vogels) and Jocelyn the Kwant of the Noord-Holland Landscape Foundation. “Because why would we as a person put us above the mouse?”

Meijer “by taking care of the mice, playing the guitar for them, making a tunnel network throughout the room, but especially by studying them carefully” behind that mice are not one -dimensional beings. “Just like people, they have their own character and friendships and bury their dead friends.”

Dealing with the world

Jury chairman Geelen speaks of a “just as compelling and moving book, in which everything comes together”. “Investigating that every nature writer must have. The visual and depicting of every good storyteller.” The book makes the reader think “about life, our interaction with the world and about what we can learn from nature – as long as you have an eye for it.”

In addition to 5,000 euros, Meijer wins an original drawing of himself, made by artist Raoul Deleo. Last year Caspar Janssen and Margot Holtman won the first nature book prize with their book Nature of the beast.

In addition to the jury prize, a public prize was also awarded this year. This went with more than 40 percent of the votes to ecologist and illustrator Jeroen Helmer with his book Wilderness in your own country. Helmer shows what nature can look like when you give her the space.

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