( ?) A7 ? s+ z7 xA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.7 [4 T; \, K; U6 M6 W
, h9 i# l! k. T+ F4 k, r8 ^Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. 3 F" e5 S2 N4 A/ r% h/ v: C* {/ ~" l2 }: l6 s
Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". # g" P0 F ?* b5 B) Z7 n9 {! ^3 c/ |
He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". ' e8 X! @( ^0 v4 E 1 ?; U3 |% V1 J) x: gMao'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.5 s4 F h" D$ s0 J2 c7 C1 Y/ t0 q
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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/ ]- ^, e5 ^% T
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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.$ I3 s! @3 D- J# n" H
. C! J0 u% L& A0 D" R' k" YThey each received £1,000. : ]9 u }6 c% C/ J' w, p0 } T8 `- r* p2 ~! G
The 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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