One of India’s best-known politicians will tell the story of her life and career in a memoir coming later this year.
Alfred A. Knopf will publish Sonia Gandhi’s Belonging: A Journey of Love in the fall, the press announced in a news release. It says that the book, “epic yet intimate, gives readers a unique lens on India—its tumultuous post-independence history and its present political struggles, offering an insider’s keen perspective on the country’s enormous economic and social changes over sixty years.”
Gandhi, a native of Lusiana, Italy, was a student at a language school in Cambridge, England, when she met Rajiv Gandhi, a son of Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India at the time. Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi were wed in 1968.
Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister of India after his mother’s assassination in 1984; he himself was assassinated in 1991. Sonia Gandhi initially declined to enter politics, but later changed her mind, becoming president of the Congress Party, a position she held from 1998 to 2017. She also served as chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance from 2004 to 2023, and is currently a member of India’s Parliament.
“In a voice at once perceptive and modest, she shares her insights into identity, duty, and the meaning of home,” Knopf says. “Belonging is at heart one courageous woman’s story of finding the strength to remake her life and serve her country.”
Sonia Gandhi said in a statement, “I wanted this memoir to be a testament of my heart’s journey through the tender joys and dark despair that have marked my life. Much has been written about my family, but few narratives were able to reach into the truth of their motivations, their actions and even their very human failings. In many ways, this book is a homage to their humanness.”
Belonging is scheduled for publication on Nov. 10.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
