* r! Y3 T3 P6 g/ xMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize / z9 r& C9 I: p D5 X " m+ b2 J4 g* h* s: U; HA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction., {! b0 b5 O% n) x8 n' Y
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Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.* G# ]4 M0 i% c& _, r
9 O M! H" D* Q- AChair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".. [6 S/ A! h) w6 e: `! H: C |
5 |& X5 X# d4 v; w7 s# x+ @He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".$ R: X: D$ v* [6 W, w D
/ y' \9 G& i5 E& hMao'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. 8 c: |' R1 s3 s. i2 Q* L y0 I P) V% v4 U- s
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. $ s2 O6 S+ l4 t% e' u6 C. [9 Q
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.0 E% T! D# c2 s& L: v. Q% o1 F5 _
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They each received £1,000. - }! E9 X5 ?0 F' D8 ~3 j& [ : t) H! N. b! K, z% k; X/ O2 ZThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
