( J8 `3 Y; B6 W( i1 SMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize% W2 f* W( m3 H
& N% F3 J: i5 oA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.3 v, f2 |) z$ K
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Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. # a4 T! O0 A8 K, m8 G" J/ d% i. C ?$ f# R- ~' @
Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". y. W2 D2 ]- x6 Q, _ 9 w( `8 D' U4 Z4 K9 q7 Q* aHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".% o) J ?; c8 r$ d; f
2 W8 C) ?7 ^5 ?5 B) Z5 ~- ^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.3 I3 r) s/ O- h
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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.- V C& `: G/ f: W+ C. f& X9 }+ g
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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." y: J- `2 t2 y2 {& Z7 }* I
! D5 T' J8 |. i, U4 AThey each received £1,000.; Q6 b0 F' h o6 z6 e5 I% C
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The prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
