1 @" j4 ~4 x1 b5 X2 f, o$ kMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize4 T9 Y/ h# g/ S& y& w; }- H* C
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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.6 a, j% _5 M# M
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Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. 2 i9 D- m3 t" Z8 @# _. i, d" @ & \" G( v6 ?8 e: @Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".! I5 n/ i) e6 l5 b1 `8 R; q7 b
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He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".3 H. H* y Y! P1 @: R2 t
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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.' ? _, ^) Z( m d) ]( R
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The 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. & @( n5 `; z0 Y' c2 S& E) d8 S9 s. A: ~! h/ }! i% c* n
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. g, @, ?3 S9 E: x1 g, ~, M8 e) N
% R! g- ^' @- [$ U7 GThey each received £1,000. 5 K4 g4 P; t5 i; ~+ B" [ 4 ^7 j8 |8 h3 rThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
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