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冯克是为数不多获准使用中国历史档案的外国学者之一。/ N8 S5 C2 _ ~" P: P
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Mao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize3 ~) p+ O* F3 Y7 F4 N0 g
; y4 y8 ?4 w" h) R# E# \$ VA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. " K6 A# f9 Q9 w5 h. ?9 x3 ` 9 E# W. s1 c' f5 C3 SMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. 7 E2 N6 q; H, t! G* N4 J0 G9 R8 T8 J I! r; h O2 ~6 e+ u
Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".' j0 A3 s% }( x1 @( ]- K! e0 A# V
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He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". & R; m* x( L! y7 D, h% E1 P ' @% U$ c+ H! A& z. DMao'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.; V. B3 z3 D9 c2 w3 X$ P. k% u! X
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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.- [$ Q% j- z2 Z' k1 o
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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.4 s/ ^8 X6 |# J8 n2 u2 T# x; ]
. {, u1 C, T% ~They each received £1,000. 7 O! ]5 B& ?) i' E& [' w( P 8 a; ^. E1 j% B* x. B% B1 W" h, EThe 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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