Sonia Gandhi memoir 'Belonging' to trace love, loss and politics from November 10

Sonia Gandhi's memoir Belonging will be published on November 10, tracing her journey from Italy to India. The book offers a personal account of love, loss and political choices that shaped modern India.

In Short

• The 544-page book spans Sonia Gandhi’s life from post-war Italy to India
• It recounts meeting Rajiv in Cambridge and adapting to Indian family life
• The narrative revisits Sanjay and Indira Gandhi’s deaths and family upheaval

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, will be published on November 10 this year. The 544-page book, to be released by Alfred A. Knopf, is described as a "revelatory" memoir that traces her life from post-war Italy to India and tells a deeply personal and political story.

A description on the Penguin Random House website calls it "a surprising memoir that tells a riveting personal and political story of love, family, and an endlessly fascinating country: India". It says the book will cover Gandhi's journey from her early years in Italy and her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi to the losses that shaped her life and the future of her adopted home, as well as her eventual role in the Congress.

According to the description, the memoir begins in Cambridge, England, where "in 1965 Sonia Maino, a nineteen-year-old student, falls in love at first sight" with Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It says the book recounts her introduction to her "formidable mother-in-law", prime minister Indira Gandhi, and shows Sonia gaining confidence by Rajiv's side as she learns to speak Hindi, wear saris and relish Indian cuisine.

The memoir also covers the tragedies that hit the Gandhi family after Rajiv Gandhi's brother Sanjay died in a plane crash and Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. The description says that after his mother's death, and despite Sonia's fears, Rajiv became prime minister, and that "seven years later Rajiv, too, while on his campaign trail, is assassinated by a suicide bomber". It adds that Sonia resisted pressure to enter politics for several years, but later became the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress and, after the party chose her to be prime minister following a key election, made "an astonishing decision" to decline the post and instead lead her party in an alliance that governed the country for a decade.

The publisher says the book offers "a unique lens on India" through its post-independence history, present political struggles, and economic and social change over 60 years, while also presenting an intimate portrait of Sonia Gandhi's private joys and hardships. Alfred A. Knopf is an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends