Roderick Matthews
Subcontinental Drifts
Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day
By John Keay
William Collins 347pp £25 order from our bookshop
It is 14 years since John Keay wrote India: A History, still the single best volume on the subject. Now he gives us Midnight’s Descendants, which is much more than just a coda to its benchmark predecessor. Themed around the Great Partition of 1947 and its effects, the book covers the interrelated histories of five South Asian states – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal – with cameo appearances from China, Afghanistan, Sikkim and Bhutan.
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