: ?- `7 p. ?5 b. WMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize/ s3 v8 ~8 I( }2 C- f: g
( a0 I4 M' ^ t3 P' B3 WA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction., G. H9 _* e2 f0 L# j" W6 C
* a" b4 l% W8 H" q8 X5 F) xMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. " P3 w: s5 P% s) z& z w; w. Q# t; m. ~
Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".4 K1 D/ \. K3 c3 B7 t2 U3 ?/ E
7 D6 F5 h R- d/ j0 p- J3 D; ^He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". 0 D6 n1 d6 {9 W3 a7 B0 L6 l. d y) m1 m
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. . ~: F' o" n# _% g , Z; h5 E$ ?, D% R( G: Q$ ^ ^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.( x4 }5 }1 U- v- v) F& G$ p
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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., L0 C9 c% A) S. c; R
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They each received £1,000. " r$ j; ^9 E9 W) |7 r+ D 8 p( Q' ~8 V/ o1 f. _The 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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