2 }! ]# t. o: c- H9 @4 l: mMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize4 e$ g" f6 A, x
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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 E* ~2 i# T! |3 x + ~: ]3 Z4 z3 ]/ @! Z2 [0 sMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.; }4 b! @8 A5 X$ U6 g
3 [8 k, i" c, i# v, n, EChair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". ) [. V- x$ ]$ D5 y - n2 X8 ^ M! W" U- \He added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century".$ |5 h6 M) f* M0 p
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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. 0 C$ @7 Z* Q; \% J/ F ; V: E% H) y5 r$ e' o* c" 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.. l1 h6 V4 I6 Q" N& [
3 b6 _ p* z' RThis 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.! w' e/ g% E( l& |
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They each received £1,000. s& ]: I2 E+ A, G( R
' Z6 h: U0 N2 V1 O: TThe 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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