Shattered Lands

Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia

Sam Dalrymple

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

William Collins
30 September 2025

History; Asian history; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000; National liberation & independence, post-colonialism

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 forts from the Bab el-Mandab 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 wars in Burma and Sri Lanka, ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan and north-east 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 debut 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.

By: Sam Dalrymple
Imprint: William Collins
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 270g
ISBN: 9780008466824
ISBN 10: 0008466823
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Sam Dalrymple is a Delhi-raised Scottish historian, filmmaker and multimedia producer. He graduated from Oxford University as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar. 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. His work has been published in The New York Times, Spectator and featured in TIME, the New Yorker and Economist. He is a columnist for Architectural Digest and in 2025, Travel & Leisure named him 'Champion of the Travel Narrative'. Shattered Lands is his first book.

Reviews for Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia

'This richly researched and vividly written book tells the story of how a colossal and powerful Empire was broken up into many distinct nation-states. The narrative is peopled by a wide range of characters: arrogant imperialists, ambitious nationalists, self-absorbed princes, passionate dissidents, suffering refugees. Through these individual lives Sam Dalrymple deftly explores the persisting fault-lines of language, ethnicity, religion, and nation. An impressive debut by a gifted and very energetic young writer' Ramachandra Guha, author of Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World ‘With masterly detail, grand vision and moral clarity, Sam Dalrymple takes the breaking up of Britain’s Indian Empire and recreates an intricate and highly animate drama – brilliant storytelling, exemplary history' Philip Marsden '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 '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