Winner announced of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction

www.thesamueljohnsonprize.co.uk

“AN EPIC RECORD OF HUMAN FOLLY”

WINS THE £20,000 BBC SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

Mao’s Great Famine: by Frank Dikötter is today, Wednesday 6 July, announced the winner of the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. In the book, Dutch academic Frank Dikötter, chronicles an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented.

The announcement was made by chair of the judges, Ben Macintyre, at an awards ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects.  Coverage of the winner and shortlisted books will be broadcast in a special edition of BBC Two’s The Culture Show on 7 July at 7pm

Ben Macintyre comments, "This meticulous account of a brutal manmade calamity is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th century.  With access to hitherto hidden archives, Frank Dikötter has created a harrowing, superbly-written indictment of Mao's disastrous revolutionary experiment that led to the unnecessary deaths of 45 million Chinese people. This epic record of human folly is stunningly original and hugely important; it casts Chinese history in a radical new light, with a devastating psychological portrait of the dictator whose "Great Leap Forward' plunged China into catastrophe.”

Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. Dikötter shows that instead of lifting the country to superpower status and proving the power of communism, as Mao had imagined, in reality the Great Leap Forward was a giant - and disastrous - step in the opposite direction. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death.

Frank Dikötter is one of a small number of historians to have been given access into the Chinese archives since they were re-opened. Mao’s Great Famine reveals exclusive new detail of shocking period, providing fresh historical perspectives for the first time. 

Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China on leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has pioneered the use of archival sources and published nine books that have changed the way historians view modern China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to his last book entitled China Before Mao: The Age of Openness (2007).

Frank Dikötter is married and lives in Hong Kong. Born in the

“The most authoritative and comprehensive study of the biggest and most lethal famine in history.  A must-read”   Jung Chang

“The most important book of the year”   Evening Standard

“Stunning”    Michael Burleigh, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year

Ben Macintyre was joined on the panel by Prospect editor-at-large David Goodhart; journalist and author Sam Leith; prize-winning biographer Brenda Maddox; and best-selling historian, writer and broadcaster Amanda Vickery.

Frank Dikötter wins £20,000. Each of the other five shortlisted authors receives £1,000.

The full BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011 shortlist was:

·       Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter (Bloomsbury)

·       Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham Dixon (Allen Lane)

·       Liberty’s Exiles by Maya Jasanoff (HarperPress)

·       The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (Fourth Estate)

·       Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg (Oxford University Press)

·       Reprobates by John Stubbs (Viking)

Former winners

1999   Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin)

2000   Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns (The Penguin Press)

2001   The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh (Macmillan)

2002   Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Margaret Macmillan (John Murray)

2003   Pushkin: A biography by T.J. Binyon (HarperCollins)

2004   Stasiland by Anna Funder (Granta)

2005   Like a Fiery Elephant by Jonathan Coe (Picador)

2006   1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber & Faber)

2007   Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Bloomsbury)

2008   The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)

2009   Leviathan or The Whale by Philip Hoare (Fourth Estate)

2010   Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Granta)