& L6 r* g7 D2 C+ k+ f6 ]Mao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize9 Q! G! c* ~8 ~* n8 ~
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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./ }7 p6 ?% i6 b! I3 g/ [ h. N
8 U8 P) c5 y# d$ S; G, B( aMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.' B7 F Q. v4 ^
8 H! B' T, G2 J- qChair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".6 Z! _7 K" _9 o; j8 n0 p
5 z! w5 U- ^- f7 THe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".& |9 Q( s* D0 o: y8 \$ \
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Mao'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 h; E6 k. S9 J
9 h& T2 C& Z: c. K- q7 d& ]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.0 R* Y4 }6 b& w# O; w* [! a( L
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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 C, m e& f: U7 t
( c: ]' {8 V3 `. S) m4 g# e) i9 qThey each received £1,000.& @9 X4 R8 J ^% N
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The prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.