Awards for non-fiction

The literary award Magnesia Litera 2021, category Litera for non-fiction, was won by Professor Jaroslav Petr, DrSc. for the book The Ten Senses. How Humans and Animals Perceive the World Around Them (published by Argo/Dokořán, Prague). In the book the author has depicted a number of anomalies, curiosities and incredible capabilities in animals, taking readers into the mind boggling realm of animal senses.We learn everything about the world around us through our senses. And we are far from using only the well-known five such as sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Some blind people orient themselves by reflected sounds, like bats do. However, through their senses the animals get such a perception of the world that we can hardly imagine. The songbirds hear the approaching storm several days in advance, the turtles can feel touch despite the hard shell. Jaroslav Petr has collected an incredible number of stunning sensory anomalies and curiosities. At the same time, the book draws attention to the harm that crude human interventions in the environment do the animals whose senses have been formed over millennia. The gripping book supports the author's reputation of an excellent narrator with outstanding knowledge of the natural world around us. The book will captivate and entertain the reader, and the only downside may be that it will not be available all the time, because once it is put aside, it will be taken by another family member.