Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia

Sam Dalrymple is a Delhi-raised Scottish historian and filmmaker. He graduated from Oxford University as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar, and also studied at the University of Isfahan and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran. He has worked across South and Central Asia, including stints with Turquoise Mountain in Kabul, and with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Hunza and Lahore. In 2018, he co-founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 Partition of India. His award-winning 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. He is a columnist for Architectural Digest, and in 2025, Travel & Leisure named him ‘ Champion of the Travel Narrative’. He runs the history Substack @ travelsofsamwise. Shattered Lands is his first book.

Samia Rahman is a writer, scholar and journalist, whose research focuses on Muslim women, patriarchy and structures of power. She is the author of Muslim Women and Misogyny: Myths and Misunderstandings in 2024 and in 2025 wrote the Centre for Media Monitoring’s report on Muslim Women working in UK media. The former director of the Muslim Institute and former deputy editor of the quarterly Critical Muslim, she is studying for a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London.