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Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 [Paperback]

Frank Dik�tter (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 3 May 2011
Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011

Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death.
Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the Western world in less than fifteen years. It lead to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known.

Dikotter's extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

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Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 + The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957
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Product details

  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks (3 May 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1408810034
  • ISBN-13: 978-1408810033
  • Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 22,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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› Visit Amazon's Frank Dikötter Page
Frank Dikötter
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Review

'A masterpiece of historical investigation into one of the world's greatest crimes' (New Statesman)

'It is hard to exaggerate the achievement of this book in proving that Mao caused the famine ... only thanks to brilliant scholarship such as this will the heirs of the vanished millions finally learn what happened to their ancestors' (Sunday Times)

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

'Gripping ... Prof Dikötter's painstaking analysis of the archives shows Mao's regime resulted in the greatest "man-made famine" the world has ever seen' (Daily Express)

Book Description

An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine

Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2011
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
50 of 50 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars An essential but harrowing read 5 Feb 2012
By Andy
Format:Kindle Edition
In terms of shock and impression that it leaves you, very few books compare. This has to be one of the books which has left me utterly shocked and has really opened my eyes to the brutality of Mao's regime. Being born in a former cummunist country that was also a staunch supporter of Mao (Albania), I thought that I'd be able to draw parallels of people's lives in both countries. How wrong I was. The book details page after page sheer human suffering all in the name of mad schemes created by the politburo and in many cases by Mao himself.

I want to say that I enjoyed this book, but in saying such a word would imply a sort of entertainment or satisfaction from the book. Enjoyment is the wrong word. I found this book to be profoundly humbling and being the sensitive type, most of the time, I found myself being absolutely repulsed by the idiocy and lunacy of the authorities and the great human loss that resulted. It takes a great writer for a book to have such an effect on the reader. And kudos to him! Dikotter is truly an amazing writer and his research into Mao's China is painstaking and second to none. He writes with a sense of compassion for the people caught in this tragedy but does not however mince his words.

I'd certainly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about China or who wants to be left humbled about how lucky they truly are!
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Prepare to be appalled on every page 18 Mar 2013
By O. G. M. Morgan
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book contains a devastating shock on just about every page - I promise you that, for every page without a shock, there will be eleven pages with plenty of shocks to spare.

I have read extensively about the Holocaust, the terror-famine in Ukraine, Stalin's Gulag, North Korea. Those books make me weep, rightly so, but they, even collectively, describe a destruction of human life which just doesn't compare with what happened in China and Tibet from 1958 to 1962. I'm pretty sure that the author is being extremely conservative, when he gives an estimate of about 45 million deaths from the so-called "Great Leap Forward".

China, in the fifties, was supposed to surpass Britain's industrial output. That meant abandoning silly old agriculture (why would the world's most populous country need copious amounts of food, after all?). It required the export of huge amounts of rice and maize, grains which were essential for the survival of Chinese farmers, to pay for dodgy industrial hardware from Russia, East Germany and even rather better functioning machinery from parts of the capitalist world, such as West Germany and the United States. China simply couldn't meet the payments. It carried on exporting agricultural produce, much of it completely inedible, by the time it reached its destination, while its own farmers starved to death, in numbers which the human brain (mine, anyway) is just not up to imagining.

This disaster (1958-1961) coincided with an implementation of collectivisation which was even more catastrophic than the the soviet version in the twenties and thirties, the Romanian edition in the late eighties, even worse than the Ethiopian disaster of the mid-eighties.

They tore down straw huts (people's actual houses), to make fertiliser. Read more ›
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Uncovering horror 4 Nov 2012
By Toby Frith
Format:Paperback
When one thinks about the disasters of the 20th century, we tend to focus on the conflagration of the Second World War - where the Nazis systematically murdered with surgical precision via a series of death camps, 6 million Jews. His erstwhile ally and then enemy, Stalin, who himself was no stranger to genocide, once remarked "one person's death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" - a horrific quote, but when we are faced with such a barrage of numbers, it is perhaps inevitable that our ability to personalize or at least humanize such an thought is lost to the winds of time.

Frank Dikotter's book concentrates on "The Great Leap Forward" of 1958-62, Mao's relentless drive to haul China into the modern age with a series of command-economy style reforms to both the industrial and agrarian base. The result - an estimated 45 million deaths, mostly due to forced starvation, but also around 10-15% of that via beatings, torture and straight forward murder - and all with no tangible achievement, as, to be expected, the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster of unparalleled scale. Mao wanted to push China onto the global stage, setting unobtainable targets for his minions, who inevitably would resort to violence to try to ensure they were met.

The sheer baseness of what happens is almost unfathomable - you couldn't call it "medieval" because that would be a disservice to the achievements of that age. To think that this sort of thing went on whilst say, the Beatles were just about to hit the western world doesn't almost compute. A country with a rich civilized history reduced to a year zero, manichaen duality of those who could work and eat, and those who couldn't and therefore died. Read more ›
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars China's great leap into darkness 5 April 2013
By Edgar Wagner
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is about the great leap "forward" and what it really meant to the Chinese. It is a superb book. Very definitely worth reading. I, personally, have no criticisms of this book. In fact, Frank Dikötter left me wanting to read more about China, and, in particular, the next great disaster, the Cultural Revolution.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars My husband loves it.
Bought for my husband after seeing all about china on the television. He loves the book and was very impressed.
Published 2 months ago by jvmerlin
5.0 out of 5 stars Unimagineably horrifying
Being close to a girl caught up in the cultural revolution I wanted to know about this too. How could a whole nation have been so mesmerised by its leader to go along with this?
Published 3 months ago by Eileen Eley
4.0 out of 5 stars Most informative book
For those of us who admire the growth of the Chinese economy and social change it is revealing to read how damaged the Chinese nation was during the time of Mao and the man made... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Dr Wesley E HArry
5.0 out of 5 stars Mao:how a man's ego 'liberated 'China
I thoroughly rate this book very highly.The author gives a comprehensive account of the lead up to the Great Leap Forward and how one man's prejudices and self important ego... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr I. Thomson
4.0 out of 5 stars Filled with detailed facts and observations
A no holds barred insght into the recent history of the Peoples Republic of China. Fascinating and revealing - excellent!
Published 3 months ago by YFenni
5.0 out of 5 stars Comment below
This feedback box is really really irritating. If I don't want to leave any written feedback, which i do not want to, i should not be forced to do so. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Bob Shea
4.0 out of 5 stars Big on detail.
A forensic examination of the evil perpetrated on 600m people in the name of communism. Dikotter is like a tenacious prosecutor and we are his jury. Read more
Published 4 months ago by C. E. Cumming
5.0 out of 5 stars A harrowing, but compelling read.
It's not every day that you come across a book which is truly harrowing but here you have one. It is the unvarnished story of a leader and his nation. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars History
Excellently written and researched. Full of compassion for the millions of victims of this atrocity, inspired by an uncompromising dogma.
Published 5 months ago by Micheal Seoige
5.0 out of 5 stars A challenging but engrossing read.
This is one of the most remarkable books I've ever read. The research is meticulous, fact and sources clearly documented. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Bookie
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