Shattered Lands

** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ** A Best Book of 2025 for 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' GUARDIAN 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 in forts from the Bab el-Mandeb 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.