The Anarchy

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents The Anarchy by William Dalrymple, read by Sid Sagar.

THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR
FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019
A FINANCIAL TIMES, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, WALL STREET JOURNAL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India … A book of beauty’ – Gerard DeGroot, The Times

In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish a new administration in his richest provinces. Run by English merchants who collected taxes using a ruthless private army, this new regime saw the East India Company transform itself from an international trading corporation into something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business.

William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

Critics Review

An energetic pageturner that marches from the counting house on to the battlefield, exploding patriotic myths along the way
Guardian
A tour de force *****
Telegraph
Magnificent … The Anarchy explodes myths that have accreted around the history of the Company like barnacles on the hulls of its ships ... Dalrymple shines a forensic light on the knotty historical relationship between commercial and imperial power
Evening Standard
Dalrymple has been at the forefront of the new wave of popular history, consistently producing work that engages with a wider audience through writerly craft, an emphasis on characters and their agency, evocative description of place and time, and the inclusion of long-neglected perspectives … The book’s real achievement is to take readers to an important and neglected period of British and south Asian history, and to make their trip their not just informative but colourful
Observer
Gloriously opulent … India is a sumptuous place. Telling its story properly demands lush language, not to mention sensitivity towards the country’s passionate complexity. Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India … A book of beauty
The Times
It is well-trodden territory but Dalrymple ... brings to it erudition, deep insight and an entertaining style
Financial Times
Combining extensive research, judicious analysis and an acceptable level of outrage, Dalrymple’s compelling account will cement his status as the most widely read British writer on India since Kipling … A brave and stirring narrative of India’s eighteenth-century fragmentation
Literary Review
[A] rampaging, brilliant, passionate history … Dalrymple gives us every sword-slash, every scam, every groan and battle cry. He has no rival as a narrative historian of the British in India … A gripping tale of bloodshed and deceit, of unimaginable opulence and intolerable starvation ... shot through with an unappeasable moral passion
Wall Street Journal
‘Masterful … Dalrymple has been for some years one of the most eloquent and assiduous chroniclers of Indian history. With this new work, he sounds a minatory note … Dalrymple has done a great service in not just writing an eminently readable history of eighteenth-century India, but in reflecting on how so much of it serves as a warning for our own time’
Scotland on Sunday
A magnificently readable book, deeply researched and richly atmospheric, written with a historian’s understanding of power and a novelistic eye for detail *****
Mail on Sunday
A rip-roaring tale of wild adventure, amorality, feckless greed and despicable behaviour … His best history to date
Country Life
[Dalrymple] is a terrifically good storyteller. He makes the reader see how events unfold and observe the personalities up close. He is widely read both in the primary sources and the historical scholarship. As a result, The Anarchy is one of the best books on Indian history published in a long time
Times Literary Supplement
Deeply researched yet easy to read, this landmark history of the East India Company is unputdownable. This is pure narrative joy
HWA Non-Fiction Crown Judges
Probably the best work of a quartet of books that Dalrymple has written focusing on Indian history... Beautifully written and generous in its details; well worth the time and effort
Which 50

User Reviews

Book 3.0
Narration 4.0
3.0
4.0
I really, really enjoy William Dalrymple's writing. It's too good. It looks to me like the Netflix of amateur historians. It's an absolute page turner and one chapter leaves you in suspense just like a cliff hanger in yoyr favourite binge watch.

I did now know anything about the history of India prior to this book and it certainly left me appreciate the complexity of the region and its people.

But I gave it only 3 stars despite thoroughly enjoying the narrative. I have no doubts about veracity of it. The author masterfully uses fragments of original sources, but they're so dramatic and and so clean that it makes me somewhat suspicious. I feel like some context is missing or some simplifications were made for either dramatic or moralistic purposes.

My personal feeling is that the book would benefit from a preface of one or two established contemporary scholars of different backgrounds. People who could debate points that author is raising with, if not equal erudition, at least comparable familiarity with sources.

The narration was great. My only slight issue was the constant quotation of currency conversion figures. Extremely distracting and it feels already dated. Only contributed to the feeling that some superficial analysis is carried out here.
AlmostSurelyRob 07/11/2024

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