. q' M) P+ ]- m5 H) fMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize9 I2 @( i' e' E6 m0 w9 _
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A book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.& F7 B/ v: U* s e
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Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.0 c2 e1 d' ?# S$ {
' [$ ?6 P# a0 O% t" b+ GChair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".8 B6 g+ t$ G- s, d
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He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". 3 G0 f2 M0 B& x8 `1 _' Q' Q4 b
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. 4 D7 C' X1 F" a! I, V- [, w" L1 \ 6 b: u/ n4 h2 S/ M( yThe 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. 8 ]8 {$ p4 t9 ~: |5 W' ^9 _# k7 F8 a) L4 I+ S0 s$ \
This 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.8 l2 K& j6 B- p7 I" J6 G% g: H8 S
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They each received £1,000. 9 I; D; M9 x" k/ q( B : K! q( L4 N" E6 s' O9 t7 _8 jThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
