Interests and Influence
Dalrymple's interests include the history and art of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Muslim world, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Jains and early Eastern Christianity. All of his seven books have won major literary prizes, as have his radio and television documentaries. His first three were travel books based on his journeys in the Middle East, India and Central Asia. His early influences included the travel writers such as Robert Byron, Eric Newby, and Bruce Chatwin. More recently, Dalrymple has published a book of essays about current affairs in South Asia, and two award-winning histories of the interaction between the British and the Mughals between the eighteenth and mid nineteenth century. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, the New Statesman and The New Yorker. He has also written many articles for Time magazine. He has been the South Asia correspondent of the New Statesman since 2004.
He attended the inaugural Palestine Festival of Literature in 2008 - giving readings and taking workshops in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem. He is a Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
His latest book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, was published by Bloomsbury, and went to the number one slot on the Indian non-fiction section bestseller list. Since its publication he has been touring the UK, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, Holland and the US with a band consisting of some of the people featured in his book including Sufis, Fakirs, Bauls, Theveram hymn singers as well as a prison warder and part-time Theyyam dancer widely believed to be an incarnation of the God Vishnu.
He has just completed a history of the First Afghan War 1839-42, Return of a King- The Battle for Afghanistan, to be published in India in December 2012, the UK in February 2013 and the US in April. (Dalrymple's great-great-granduncle Captain Colin Mackenzie fought in the war and was briefly detained by the Afghans.) He was also the curator of Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi 1707-1857, a major show of the late Mughal and Company School painting for the Asia Society in New York, which ran from February to May 2012. A catalogue of this exhibit co-edited by Dalrymple with Yuthika Sharma was published by Penguin in 2012 under the same name. He is currently working on a curatorial project related to Pahari art, focusing on the works of the artists Nainsukh and Manaku.
He is one of ten authors to have contributed to Ox Travels published by Profile Books Ltd in May 2011. The proceeds from the sales of this book will go to Oxfam.
Read more about this topic: William Dalrymple (historian)
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