, m9 p5 q7 }6 y& }4 hMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize. }) Z. h @3 N1 S m1 Y
- k- G5 n- O5 a, gA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.; ^8 E: g) q5 V% U5 E
; V$ m+ @8 a: H2 N9 p8 y; i7 TMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.: c2 i4 {' F/ i+ C: k
1 m+ p4 z7 g8 [5 s' u+ F/ h* q( K6 L! \Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".9 r# x5 j( p4 n) O( N" Q& e/ _0 j
, R2 n2 B1 v* rHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".: X% k1 B `/ o J0 Q9 m) D7 t
5 r* Y0 P. `; L: zMao'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.# X% h: q2 b2 T
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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.7 y4 o2 b7 E/ G7 a
4 f! `! s8 N4 [1 L y/ R/ qThis 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. * d( N6 D$ a9 G" }/ E( F3 p3 o" q2 J( L, u2 z( B
They each received £1,000.1 o6 W' r9 v! e" M8 B
3 N8 \# l& t3 f* |! vThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
