Elected: 2018
Discipline: Language, Literature and History
Mr William Dalrymple
Writer and Historian, No organisation
William Dalrymple is a bestselling author of ‘In Xanadu’, ‘City of Djinns’, ‘From the Holy Mountain’, ‘White Mughals’, ‘The Last Mughal’, ‘Nine Lives’, and most recently, ‘Return of a King: An Indian Army in Afghanistan’. He has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, French Prix d’Astrolabe, Wolfson Prize for History, Scottish Book of the Year Award, Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, Asia House Award Asian Literature, Vodafone/Crossword Award for nonfiction, and has, prior to the shortlisting of Return of a King, been longlisted three times for the Samuel Johnson Prize. The Italian edition of Return of a King won the 2015 Hemingway Prize and the prestigious Kapuscinski Prize for Literary Reportage. His latest book is Kohinoor, co-written with Anita Anand. William is one of the founders and a co-director of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival.