+ e: w8 C- F- O0 tMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize & Q. ? A! U4 L+ |- k; D1 T9 n2 P8 `( r9 T4 X
A book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. 7 F- ]: b X) V/ D6 t 4 v% w) @6 h! p, q: D3 IMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.0 G' N) Z1 J6 p+ z/ B
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Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". * I- F6 v+ u8 t. \4 O 0 P3 P0 u z/ b4 V" CHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". " d) B! e$ L" k7 @ 7 ^8 |4 X0 K( k* b( QMao'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. 0 m1 `+ X- m, B0 [- I9 @5 t# X& x: L% {
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.' m8 e) w( k+ f/ P
# E$ y3 G+ v: x+ O: i. p2 ?9 x' o, p9 HThis 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.) e9 e) i* a ^
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They each received £1,000. ! K* F. g% a1 N6 h0 F- ]+ d ( q7 P8 q8 S- n: b7 zThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
