India

A History

By: John Keay

Narrated by: Mike Fraser

The most authoritative and highly regarded single-volume history of India – from ancient time to the modern day. Five millennia of the sub-continent’s social, economic, political and cultural history are interpreted by one of our finest writers on India and the Far East.

India’s history begins with a highly advanced urban civilisation in the Indus valley, regressing to a tribal and pastoral nomadism, and then evolving into a uniquely stratified society. The pattern of inward invasion plus outward migration was established early: from Alexander the Great via the march of Islam and the great Moghuls to the coming of the East India Company and the establishment of the British Raj.

Older, richer and more distinctive than almost any other, India’s culture furnishes all that the historian could wish for in the way of continuity and diversity. The peoples of the Indian subcontinent, while sharing a common history and culture, are not now, and never have been, a single unitary state; the book accommodates Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as other embryonic nation states like the Sikh Punjab, Muslim Kashmir and Assam.

In this brilliant new edition, John Keay continues the narrative of India’s history – covering events from partition to the present day and examining the very different fortunes of the three successor states: Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Republic of India. Based on the latest research, this is an indispensible history of a country set to be a definitive influence on the future of world economics, politics and culture.

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Superb book. Narrator mangles pronunciations.

A very well-researched, and suberbly written book that is packed with information. If you can read it as a physical or ebook, please do so and avoid the audiobook. The narrator, The narrator, Mike Fraser, is good, but he has no idea about South Asian pronunciations. He butchers most of them. It is tiring after he does that a couple of times. I winced so many times, the worst being when he said "Yahangir" and "Yansi" (Jhansi).

Great narrator and history

The narrator is wonderful. He should certainly read the following books that don't have audiobooks yet.
1. India: A Sacred Geography (English Edition) By Diana L. Eck
2. The Impossible Indian By Faizal Devji
3. The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society Book 15) (English Edition) By Joya Chatterji
etc. etc.
Last but not the least, John Keay's own highly readable book, The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named, also deserves a wonderful narrator and audiobook. Eagerly waiting for the audio versions.