; ?% Q6 L7 E: A: w4 t6 OMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize , g7 N# p4 G0 H2 d2 N5 l7 s& ~1 D# n5 N
A book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. q' t& h7 W1 C( e' K- u% I V8 U/ Z3 I2 j5 ^ j' c4 n# { T1 |
Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. : P) X& a- f4 e+ Z$ b9 L ' q$ C$ l5 V0 z+ nChair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".8 w- T; i" D& A( O
, `" R9 }& C6 s: g* tHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". 7 L9 n" d, U( Q; z5 {, c0 X# `( N
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.6 |: i5 T; I: v9 ~: n
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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.$ |/ g! x8 b/ X9 \% e& d
; \- o) y1 W# J1 u$ ~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. 2 k/ F7 C. L% H; y' G' x) P. c) C! [# [
They each received £1,000.$ Z0 G) b8 ^# a6 V# K9 H. \
$ Q' Y$ Q/ z' g, Z! C! IThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
