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

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