Top prize for study on famine in China

A study of the “brutal manmade calamity ” that saw millions of Chinese people starve to death under the rule of Chairman Mao has won a prestigious book prize.

Dutch academic Frank Dikotter picked up the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for his work Mao’s Great Famine at a ceremony in central London on Wednesday.

It tells the story of the human cost of a set of reforms, known as The Great Leap Forward, which were intended to transform the Chinese economy.

Chairman of the judges Ben Macintyre said: “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 Dikotter has created a harrowing, superbly-written indictment of Mao’s disastrous revolutionary experiment that led to the unnecessary deaths of 45 million.

“This epic record of human folly is stunningly original and hugely important, and casts Chinese history in a radical new light, with a devastating psychological portrait of the dictator whose Great Leap Forward plunged China into catastrophe.”

Among the other works on the shortlist were a study of the cavaliers who fought against Parliament in the English Civil War and a biography of Italian painter Caravaggio.