! _$ R, Z3 C/ ^/ z0 O+ _- ?& qMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize9 B% x! u2 P' ~# ~' Z! c
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A book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. 4 y/ R, t- e6 \/ L , q4 N0 A. e1 X2 a# WMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.' R* {* e2 b9 Q& [
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Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". ! k9 |" u# A6 p# I8 n* m' x# f * S3 o# Q: c2 w7 mHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".& S. W! r( q7 x @4 H+ \8 V
. F* S# X8 b3 x% Z8 jMao'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.: t' I1 }4 o8 K, U& L! E+ P: \
' o4 Y- b6 ]$ }5 n- W* S e% GThe 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.5 K& w1 l( G6 w
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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.7 d, N9 R( G+ D Q9 R, y
+ R: H8 |8 M. Z5 x4 P. ZThey each received £1,000. + F: Q4 R% a/ ~5 O0 k/ ^% v- T, e- q% ^$ `
The prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
