Mao's Great Famine Wins Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
7 July 2011
Professor of Modern Chinese History Frank Dikötter has been awarded the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, one of the UK's most prestigious literary awards.
He won the award for Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Bloomsbury, 2010), which argues that Mao's Great Leap Forward resulted in 45 million deaths and untold suffering. The announcement was made at a ceremony held at the Royal Institute of British Architects on Wednesday, 6 July. The prize carries a £20,000 cash award.
Dikötter, who is also a SOAS alumnus (PhD History 1990), is on leave from the School at the University of Hong Kong, where he is Chair Professor of Humanities.
"I am absolutely delighted by the Samuel Johnson Prize and hope that it will bring Mao's Great Famine to many more readers," he said.
Coverage of this year's Samuel Johnson Prize will be broadcast in a special edition of BBC Two’s The Culture Show on Thursday, 7 July, at 7 pm.
Historian Ben Macintyre, who chaired the judging panel, called Mao's Great Famine "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th century".
"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,” he said.
For further information, contact:
William Friar
Communications Officer
+44 (0)20 7898 4135
w.friar@soas.ac.uk
