It’s hard to find a debut work that has been received as highly as Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia. I’ve not seen a review that’s less than laudatory: ‘Sparkling… Stunning achievement… Vivid… Essential and irresistible reading…’ ‘It is astonishing that this story has not been told before.’ My first reaction to a review was ‘This book sounds so awful I might have to read it.’ So I did, and I was right.

Sam is the son of William Dalrymple, popular author on all things Indian, Delhi-resident and the bringer of the Literary Festival to India (Jaipur). He’s a good writer; if of a distinctly leftist bent; I’ve read most of his books. Sam describes himself as ‘writer, film-maker and peace activist.’ He spent some time in Afghanistan with Turquoise Mountain Foundation, the taxpayer-funded NGO run by Mrs Rory Stewart; although it’s not known whether he was involved with the farcical initiative of lecturing bemused Afghan women on Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain.’