** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER **ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING FINALIST 2026A Best Book of the Year in the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine, NPR, History Today, Waterstones and Daunts‘A sparkling debut by an outstanding young historian’ PETER FRANKOPAN'Remarkable … The prose is vivid, the storytelling cinematic' GUARDIANA histo...

**Shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History PrizeA 2026 Orwell Prize Finalist for Political WritingA Financial Times, NPR, and BBC History Best Book of the YearA bold and sweeping history of modern South Asia, told through the five partitions that reshaped it.**As recently as 1928, a vast swath of Asia stretching from the Red Sea to the borders of Thailand was bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the “In...

** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER **ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING FINALIST 2026A Best Book of the Year in the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine, NPR, History Today, Waterstones and Daunts‘A sparkling debut by an outstanding young historian’ PETER FRANKOPAN'Remarkable … The prose is vivid, the storytelling cinematic' GUARDIANA histo...

A bold and sweeping history of modern South Asia, told through the five partitions that reshaped it.As recently as 1928, a vast swath of Asia stretching from the Red Sea to the borders of Thailand was 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, home to a quarter of the world’s population. In the span of just fifty years, that empire shattered. ...