Publication Date: 6 September 2010, Hardback, 448 pages
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. Access to Communist Party archives has long been denied to all but the most loyal historians, but now a new law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Frank Dikotter’s astonishing , riveting and detailed book chronicles an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented. Dikotter shows that instead of lifting China into the world’s elite group of superpowers and thus proving the power of Communism, the Great Leap Forward was a giant and disastrous step in the opposite direction. Under this initiative, the country became the site of: the most deadly mass killings, the greatest demolition of residential property and the most blatant destruction of the natural environment in human history. At least 45 million people were worked or starved to death, up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land was savaged in a maniacal pursuit of industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikotter at last gives voice to the dead and the disenfranchised. This book, definitively recasts the history of the People’s Republic of China.Frank Dikotter
Mao’s Great Famine won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2011. While beating five other works on the short list, it was characterized by the judges as “stunningly original and hugely important.” Dikotter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses on both Mao and the Great Chinese Famine. He is also Professor of Modern History of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. In 2008, Dikotter published The Age of Openness: China Before Mao which could almost be considered a prequel to his latest book. It provides an account of the Republican era of Chinese history, spanning from the early 20th Century to the Communist Party takeover in 1949. This was a period of unprecedented openness during which China was actively pursuing engagement with the world, as evidenced by a pluralistic intellectual environment, thriving open markets and economic growth, and expanded liberties and rule of law.