A best-selling british author’s American nonfiction debut: In this brilliantly illuminating work exploring the realities and legacies of empire, Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of what we consider to be modern Britain is actually rooted in its imperial past.

In prose that is once clear-eyed and full or acerbic wit, Sathnam Sanghera shows how the past is everywhere in the United Kingdom, drawing as well critical links to similarities in the United States and in othercountries throughout the world. Empire (British or otherwise) informs nearly everything, from common thought processes to the routines that shape everyday life, from the foundation of the National Health Service to the nature of racism in the U.K., from the British distrust of intellectuals in public life to the exceptionalism that permeated the campaign for Brexit and the government’s early response to the Covid crisis. And all of this while empire itself is a subject that is shockingly obscured from view. Revelatory and lucid, Empireland suggests that cultivating a new, more honest relationship to the past is essential for moving forward.