8 r; b _ |9 j0 s: Y. H, z |! A1 V* sMao's Great Famine wins Samuel Johnson Prize( C" p0 L; K) q- w6 P f
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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./ R$ b a2 m4 b) U ]) W
3 F# t9 ^1 r/ m6 {Mao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.$ z, M4 a1 d# [
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Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly". H2 ? q, o% [2 n6 @3 F7 A8 R' o " m$ k, }# u; y( e8 U; g1 k# IHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". : r/ B t0 p6 ^$ R" Q7 ]6 p: |: G% m/ O* b$ Q9 v7 U+ b" U
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.7 Q! q5 k4 f; U% T/ M( n- V
( o. @( y b h: _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.2 z* I1 \& c# d
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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.% X0 t4 K9 K: a5 B4 ?3 o, O+ s
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They each received £1,000. : N5 X& W4 u4 D5 ^1 U 9 D$ y; w2 ]. c1 h; w; n( HThe prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.