Shattered Lands

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

‘Shattered Lands tells a story that is both vast in scope and deeply personal in consequence. It is history that feels immediate and human, clear and compelling, moving as it does between maps, political decisions, and the lived experiences of ordinary people’ JARED DIAMOND

‘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

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.