Shattered Lands

EARLY PRAISE FOR SHATTERED LANDS:

‘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

‘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

‘A vivid account that is meticulous and memorable in detail and authoritative in its ambitious sweep. This is a stunning and assured debut by an important new voice in narrative history and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the making of modern Asia’ KAVITA PURI

‘Brilliant storytelling, exemplary history’ PHILIP MARSDEN

‘Written with a novelist’s flair and an archival historian’s research, Shattered Lands captures the violence and the ruptures that shaped South Asia through partition. It is astonishing that this story has not been told before. Both essential and irresistible reading – an unputdownable book’ EUGENE ROGAN

‘Surprising, relevant, finely-judged, diligently-researched and brilliantly told, Shattered Lands does what the best histories do and presents a story you might think you know, but in a way that will be a revelation. This is one of the most assured and accomplished debuts I have read in many years’ ANTHONY SATTIN

SAM DALRYMPLE is a Delhi-raised Scottish historian and award-winning filmmaker. He graduated from Oxford University as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar, and also studied at the University of Isfahan and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran. He has worked across South and Central Asia, including stints with Turquoise Mountain in Kabul, and with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Hunza and Lahore. In 2018, he co-founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 Partition of India. His debut film, Child of Empire, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, and his animated series Lost Migrations sold out at the BFI the same year. He is a columnist for Architectural Digest, and in 2025, Travel & Leisure named him ‘ Champion of the Travel Narrative ’. He runs the history Substack @ travelsofsamwise. Shattered Lands is his first book.