The Golden Road

With a mind-boggling mastery of sources, Dalrymple weaves a thrilling tale of India’s cultural hegemony, not forgetting its invention of mathematics and related disciplines still in use today -- Andrew Lycett * Spectator *
An outstanding new account of ancient India’s cultural conquest of the globe … The Golden Road is an absorbingly literary history, a tale of tales ... Xi Jinping’s China is currently much better at promoting itself as the heart of Asia. But it may ultimately prove no match for India’s primordial gift for myth and narrative, and this is what Dalrymple has so successfully channelled into The Golden Road. The plot, especially for South Asians, may be an old one, but it’s the most compelling retelling we have had for generations * Financial Times *
Dazzling ... The Golden Road, teeming with his own evocative descriptions of far-flung cave and forest temples, sculptures and wall paintings, is not just a historical study but also a love letter – to a lost syncretic world of interacting and evolving religious creeds and intellectual movements, when Indian ideas transformed the world * Guardian *
A multifarious and engaging narrative, which, like Indian trade, takes us in many directions, peppered with lively stories and charismatic individuals * Independent *
A richly woven, highly readable account of the highlights of India’s outsized influence on the world. It is also a celebration of cosmopolitanism and cultural exchange, written with passion and verve and hinting at an optimism for India’s future of which Tagore himself would no doubt heartily have approved * Spectator *
A pioneering new book based on methodical historical research to showcase the huge loss for the world in misunderstanding and misrepresenting India * i *
Dalrymple is erudite and wonderfully entertaining … This is a wonderful book. Read it through in delight, acquiring knowledge, perhaps even wisdom. Then you will surely return to read much of it again -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
William Dalrymple’s luminous new book … In brilliantly excavating the Golden Road in the current age of the Silk Road, Dalrymple’s book is both contemporary and altogether foreign. It does not so much explain the present as indicate the long and even insurmountable distance between then and now * New Statesman *
As with Dalrymple’s earlier books, The Golden Road is full of adventurous tales ... Woven into the text are some of his own travels, lushly described ... Dalrymple doesn’t talk down to his reader, with words like fascicles, quincunx, thalassocracy, voussoirs and grimoire abounding. And the 288 pages of text are backed by a prodigious ninety-two pages of notes and a fifty-six-page bibliography * Inside Story *
Dalrymple’s own odyssey is equally laden to the gunwales with pages of astounding illustrations and arresting anecdotes, but its destination is always clear and its argument compelling * London Review of Books *
A more masterful and accessible survey of a ‘world-changing’ traffic in commodities, creeds, scientific insights and artistic conventions than The Golden Road would be hard to find. The only surprise is that it has taken Dalrymple so long to address the subject. No one is better qualified to do so ... The breadth of Dalrymple’s research is a revelation and a delight ...What Tagore called ‘the Greater India outside India’ knew no boundaries. Neither does this enthralling study * Literary Review *
Dalrymple is at his artful best in his account of how the knowledge of several mathematical concepts and astronomical discoveries passed from ancient India to eighth-century Baghdad through an eccentric family of Muslim royal viziers who had once been rectors in a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan * Observer *
A wonderful storyteller, he’ll make you fall in love with India all over again * Indianlink *
A bold, sweeping narrative ... Highly readable ... Dalyrmple's book is also timely * Australian *
Anybody who’s interested not only in the history of India, but really in the history of the entire world, should be reading this * Monocle *
An epic narrative exploring India’s profound influence on the world, particularly through its contributions to mathematics, religion, and trade. This work showcases the “astonishing gifts” India has given humanity, weaving together historical threads that have often been overlooked or misunderstood * Eastern Eye *
A book as glorious as its name implies ... The jigsaw pieces that he puts into place, as he takes us down the Golden Road, are backed up with an astonishing 200 pages of source notes and bibliography to clarify and verify his position. Surely a most joyous rabbit hole to go down once the book is read * Irish Times *
Riveting ... Dalrymple brings to his defence of this term [the Indosphere/Golden Road] the boyish energy and eagerness that have marked his writing since his youthful travel book, In Xanadu (1989) ... The sagas of the East India Company and the First Afghan War have seldom been more thrillingly depicted * Telegraph *
It has long been clear that Dalrymple is primarily a historian and an erudite and wonderfully entertaining one at that ... It is a wonderful book and, though Dalrymple is too knowledgeable to deny the achievements of the BritishRaj, the book reminds us how brief our Indian empire was * Scotsman *
Huge in scope ... Dalrymple, a really well known and loved as a historian, has written a stack of books about India and this is a culmination of all of them ... as with all of Dalrymple's books it's so accessible, so well written, really clear, so even though it's packed with information it's just so readable and so fascinating * Breakfast with Michael Clarke *