; O4 ~4 [0 n% N6 f! A * G# r$ _7 t* L; }8 {# y" e ' @. @9 j- p2 o0 g& ~0 E冯克是为数不多获准使用中国历史档案的外国学者之一。 # e8 u2 j9 P5 V9 j$ h7 o # B6 [, @0 @7 f# _, m% ~Mao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize % c# Z0 j9 f$ [0 ~) g- Q! J, w0 V, y
A book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. 7 t: t- A4 F9 E% g 0 E9 F( n/ m; P0 xMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.8 J8 x' d+ A6 v9 C$ b2 K
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Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". : p0 ^7 G2 n# ^% m # Y8 P8 D2 m6 tHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". ' N; n5 E; A( y : [& j( w5 L& X5 mMao'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. - j+ w! f( B# q" \5 ?1 J; C 0 x% c4 d6 I# s5 S& ^" r: kThe 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.# E, B K2 O8 z
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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. o7 v( D$ j& u3 ?# j
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They each received £1,000.7 F$ P! o' ~+ t
2 a' ?: |+ s+ W9 ~& ZThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
