: E; j. m& b* a* @# j" O! A4 @Mao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize% M! c' R/ _# W8 p' z: Q2 [
$ p! V! ^5 [# _9 H) C" hA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. $ K( H( D' h) F4 b1 j: N7 E" w3 `7 u; Q6 P8 \5 n5 i# V1 ^
Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. - P3 y5 z* i2 @" t* w1 Y - R7 R9 y5 R% {Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". & a6 Z* l' V+ }0 F- t# C( N 2 {3 h8 l# e$ m VHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". + n0 o" c# C0 P- W$ z6 r' |8 l. i. U9 \0 d8 t( {
Mao's Great Famine reveals new details of the period from 1958-1962, providing fresh historical perspectives on Mao's campaign to increase industrial production during which tens of millions starved to death. : D7 E# k2 O# R 0 {- T% s& R# @: qThe academic - currently chair of professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong - was one of a small number of historians to be given access into the Chinese archives./ R5 |" D5 Z' V$ F
4 w0 q) }& J E- Q) r' tThis year's runners-up were Andrew Graham Dixon's Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles, Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist, Jonathan Steinberg's Bismarck: A Life, and John Stubbs' Reprobates.5 @% Y( \1 _; P% _) o [, ?9 L
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They each received £1,000.7 }5 _; N% f w: b
: A: y# I" g+ u; R: r8 A/ rThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
