6 U4 b# y2 T# Q- DMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize / }! J2 h5 I& T" _6 k( ?7 q $ ^7 {* V- W/ |% u) O: F* rA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. " Y- D; b1 h2 x5 I6 j7 b% b+ t6 n) ?; @% c q
Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award. 6 m, b M% P6 }# k+ }7 m9 A- Y7 k; U: U! o
Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". ( q4 h) ?) E+ _& a9 S* \- i( j( f6 S H% { b
He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". 5 C% d& i7 M8 a' ?: G $ C3 s; P: A! W' bMao'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. 2 L- i9 w% [: m8 |- T5 ~ 5 r( E7 L9 Q( p* }8 w* 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 w$ Z+ t0 x6 P% }
) F4 W( l+ ]# l; CThis 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.& L/ J/ D" |( n
, e/ D3 w6 v" j$ k. ]( _- A7 [( mThey each received £1,000. : W% V6 ~- Z0 J$ x/ I" F: \# h 2 _' Y. s6 z& ?8 M1 _1 y% NThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
