4 A6 ?7 n6 D9 W9 E0 SMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize ( @. c* R" T% u9 J- g/ w! F$ Y2 Y' T; Z# H
A book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.( V6 g! O: B. x1 O! x
2 [8 f; L b; F m) J) E* [/ }Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. $ ~1 q, }7 c( E7 l1 ~) k4 k. I+ }4 w: i0 N' ^
Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". 0 V W1 X$ N9 N) R4 g7 H' A& H * @2 |' s6 t# B3 U3 IHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".4 i7 j5 o- D& U5 b# J
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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. $ m4 Y) q5 B0 D# p$ e) e- x1 T2 U
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. 7 d% `' @3 J3 X* c4 `/ e9 u . g: f6 \8 H$ u. l0 e: I1 cThis 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 e/ \ @; h! G5 e 0 q5 | R! [1 u; }! b2 A% c, xThey each received £1,000. 4 Y" b* g' V7 D/ y. V W, y8 p1 C) M+ F# Y3 `
The prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
