Bloomsbury snaps up historian William Dalrymple's new book on India and the ancient world

Bloomsbury has acquired The Golden Road – a major new book by historian William Dalrymple. 

Head of trade Alexis Kirschbaum bought world all-language rights from David Godwin of David Godwin Associates. Bloomsbury will publish The Golden Road around the world in September 2024, with the exception of the US, which will follow in April 2025.

The Golden Road is described as "a definitive new look at India’s oft-forgotten position as a crucial economic and civilisational hub at the heart of the ancient and early medieval history of Eurasia". The synopsis adds: "A sweeping narrative history of epic scope, The Golden Road draws from Dalrymple’s lifetime of scholarship to reinstate India as the great intellectual and philosophical superpower of ancient Asia."

Dalrymple is the author of White Mughals (Harper Perennial), which won the Wolfson History Prize, and the Duff Cooper Prize-winning The Last Mughal (Bloomsbury). He has also written Return of a King (Bloomsbury), which won both the Hemingway and Kapuściński prizes, and the Baillie Gifford Prize-longlisted The Anarchy (Bloomsbury). 

The author has also been awarded the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award and Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton and Brown. He is also the co-host of the podcast "Empire", which he presents with Anita Anand.

Dalrymple said: "I’m so thrilled to see The Golden Road coming together after five years of travel and research which has taken me all over India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, from the Mekong Delta to the shores of the Red Sea. It’s been a wonderful journey and I’m so grateful to be working with the incredible new team at Bloomsbury to pull it all together into a book that will surprise everyone and make us look again at the global history of the ancient world and how much we owe to India."

Kirschbaum added: "William Dalrymple is a historian of rare talent, who combines rigour and precision with an immense flair for bringing civilisations to life. In The Golden Road, he brings together art, science, maths and philosophy to show readers how India pervasively influenced the ancient world, an extremely ambitious and convincing argument that will forever change how we understanding our own cultural origins."