: R% M/ [% ~* _7 uMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize 0 \/ H' T" ~, C3 ]+ d9 I 9 ~# p& x- T8 J; t& V) zA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.3 ~+ R+ V+ a1 v# B5 {
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Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award., ^# Z! a: H4 M8 k
! P! G9 S+ O7 [" {# I2 OChair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".6 @, x; z1 ^ e% u
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He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".7 a2 M5 g" N+ @1 v( C
3 h. V# @4 B2 m+ t. `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. 3 z c& j4 s8 X3 H! S! Y! h + a* k+ C6 r2 U7 S- ^/ J/ h* GThe 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.* y/ A4 Z" _9 B! m2 ~+ \5 b
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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. ) G X, y! l: V0 n8 Y4 ]$ q, h. C 4 F; ~9 U9 s1 y7 h+ B, g! hThey each received £1,000.$ `! v+ u0 l; S4 }; }8 V* T7 x
2 ?9 S8 Q' v. h. Z) n$ H, d" sThe 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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