Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia

"Sam Dalrymple’s book does the rare thing of recasting history to help us understand it anew. He investigates the five major partitions that the British undertook as they slowly ended their imperial rule over India – an India that we no longer know, which included Burma, parts of the Middle East, Bangladesh and, yes, Pakistan. The book is sweeping in scope but evocative in the small people and moments he brings forward. You don’t have to be a South Asia nerd to be into this book – it’s so gripping that it holds its own as a work of popular fiction. But for us nerds, it is an excellent work on the broken promise of ethno-nationalism in South Asia."