Shattered Lands

Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia

De: Sam Dalrymple

** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER **

A Best Book of 2025 for the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine, NPR, History Today, Waterstones and Daunts

'Remarkable … The prose is vivid, the storytelling cinematic' GUARDIAN

A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it.

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the ‘Indian Empire’, or more simply as the Raj.

It was the British Empire’s crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet. Its people used the Indian rupee, were issued passports stamped ‘Indian Empire’, and were guarded by armies garrisoned in forts from the Bab el-Mandeb to the Himalayas

And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division.

Shattered Lands, for the first time, presents the whole story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches.

Its legacies include civil war in Burma and ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan and Northeast India, and the Rohingya genocide. It is a history of ambition and betrayal, of forgotten wars and unlikely alliances, of borders carved with ink and fire. And, above all, it is the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.

Sam Dalrymple’s stunning history is based on deep archival research, previously untranslated private memoirs, and interviews in English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Konyak, Arabic and Burmese. From portraits of the key political players to accounts of those swept up in these wars and mass migrations, Shattered Lands is vivid, compelling, thought-provoking history at its best.

** Shattered Lands is being translated into four languages (Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam and Hindi), and was shortlisted for the Eastern Eye Award for History, the Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman and Atta Galatta prizes. **

‘A stunning achievement. Shattered Lands reframes the story of South Asia with rare empathy and elegance, breathing life into the legacies of the partitions that shape a quarter of our world today’ THANT MYINT-U

‘This richly researched, vividly written book tells the story of how a colossal and powerful Empire was broken up into many distinct nation-states…An impressive debut by a gifted and very energetic young writer’ RAMACHANDRA GUHA

©2025 Sam Dalrymple (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers

Reseñas de la Crítica

A Best Book of 2025 for the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine, NPR, History Today, Waterstones and Daunts

'Remarkable … the prose is vivid, the storytelling cinematic, and Dalrymple draws together forgotten archives from Aden to Assam. Above all, there is a refusal to mythologise, and instead a clear-eyed history that lays bare the possibilities foreclosed by the region’s fragmentation' GUARDIAN

‘This book is a revelation. Sam Dalrymple’s charting of these five moments is both original and important, adding a valuable layer to our understanding of a vast region of the world’ MISHAL HUSAIN

'Excellent … expertly examines the way the Indian empire was divided into 12 separate nation states between 1931 and 1971 … packed with riveting detail' INDEPENDENT

'Ambitious… an impressive debut… He brings to his material an unmoralistic, but not amoral, even-handedness. He is clear-eyed in his judgment of administrative folly and doesn’t hold back when the archives throw up yet another pith-helmeted buffoon from central casting to decry for his misjudgments' THE TIMES

' Shattered Lands has a huge range, and the material is deftly handled …Dalrymple delivers his account at pace and with a keen eye for the telling detail … A book that combines scholarship with a flair for narrative story-telling of the highest order' SPECTATOR

‘This richly researched, vividly written book tells the story of how a colossal and powerful Empire was broken up into many distinct nation-states…An impressive debut by a gifted and very energetic young writer’ RAMACHANDRA GUHA

Birth of an amazing historian and narrator

This book is both a masterpiece of narrative history and audio narration blended into one. A fresh new retelling of a familiar and old tale. Simply fascinating！ I hope he narrates all his future books as well

A Masterpiece on Mordern South Asian History

An absolute masterpiece — deeply researched, beautifully narrated, and emotionally powerful. A must-listen for anyone interested in South Asian and Arabian history and humanity.

A geopolitical drama written by life

Sam's storytelling is captivating and main characters are being betrayed, jailed and killed so often that G. R. R. Martin would sweat. I have visited several of the places mentioned in this book not knowing what happened there some decades ago. I felt sorry during my brief visit of the Nizam's palace in Hyderabad, lacking it's former glory. I hope to revisit India and Pakistan with this new knowledge as well as visit Bangladesh and Myanmar for the first time in near future. If you travel to this part of the world, I recommend to read/listen to this book.

Heady Vintage

In the Shattered Lands, Sam Dalrymple shows that the apple has not only landed close to the tree but is already fermenting into its own rather heady vintage, fresh, spirited, and perhaps even outpacing the fine old oak that is William Dalrymple. (N.B. Mussolini’s fascist paramilitary were known as the Blackshirts (Camicie Nere). The Brownshirts (Sturmabteilung, SA) were part of Hitler’s Nazi movement.
The Burmese paramilitary were modeled on Mussolini’s Blackshirts)