Maya Jasanoff of
The Guardian notes that the book is an "... energetic pageturner that marches from the counting house on to the battlefield, exploding patriotic myths along the way."
Tirthankar Roy writes in
The Times Literary Supplement that "...he is a terrifically good storyteller. He makes the reader see how events unfold and observe the personalities up close. He is widely read both on the primary sources and the historical scholarship. As a result, The Anarchy is one of the best books on Indian history published in a long time." M Saad of
Scroll notes that "[i]t is an achievement in itself that he has adroitly dealt with a work of such proportions. Dalrymple writes with a mastery in which he has few equals among his contemporaries. He is known for narrating the most dreadful of all historical events with a certain grace unique to his writing." Mukund Padmanabhan writes in
The Hindu that "[i]n his familiar passionate manner, Dalrymple cuts through the stodge that pervades a lot of writing on history to serve up a book that has it all — the compulsive pull of a thriller, the erudition of a significant piece of non-fiction, and the loveliness of a piece of literature." Madhumita Mazumdar writes in
The Telegraph that "[t]he Anarchy remains a unique meditation on corporate avarice told with the deftness of a scholar and the charm of a raconteur." The book was long listed for the
Baillie Gifford Prize 2019, and short listed for the Duke of Wellington medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction) and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020. It was a Finalist for the
Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relation. President
Barack Obama included
The Anarchy in his list of favorite books of 2019. == TV Adaptation ==