Sonia Gandhi Memoir to Reveal Private Life, Heartbreak and Political Journey

“It was heartbreak and loss that threw me into the public world of politics. Up till then I had guarded my privacy fiercely,” Gandhi said in a statement issued here on Tuesday by publisher Alfred A Knopf.

“Writing about my life did not come easily to me. It meant opening myself up, sharing moments and experiences I had always held deep inside,” the senior Congress leader said.

Titled ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’, the memoir will be released in hardcover and ebook by Knopf on November 10, while an audio edition will be published by Penguin Random House. The publisher said the announced first printing has been set at 100,000 copies.

Gandhi described the book as a “testament of my heart’s journey through the tender joys and dark despair” that marked her 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,” the veteran politician said, describing the memoir as “in many ways” a homage to their “humanness”.

The memoir traces Gandhi’s journey from her childhood in post-war Italy to her life in India, where she married Rajiv Gandhi and became the daughter-in-law of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Gandhi said that as she gradually removed herself from the political sphere and looked back on her life, the “thread of love and loyalty” running through it became clearer.

She described the journey as moving from “the simplicity of my childhood in small-town Italy” to the complexity of her later years in India.

The book begins in Cambridge, England, in 1965, where Sonia Maino, then a 19-year-old student, fell in love with Rajiv Gandhi. They got married three years later.

It recounts Gandhi’s introduction to Indira Gandhi, her efforts to learn Hindi, wear saris and relish Indian cuisine, as well as the tragedies that struck the Gandhi family.

Rajiv Gandhi’s younger brother Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash, followed by the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984. In the wake of his mother’s death, Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister and was himself assassinated seven years later while on the campaign trail.

The memoir also covers Sonia Gandhi’s eventual entry into politics after years of resisting pressure to do so and her decision in 2004 to decline the prime minister’s post after the Congress-led alliance won the election.

Gandhi said her story also offers readers a unique perspective on the social and political changes she had witnessed over six decades in India, describing it as “the beautiful country of my belonging”.

Knopf described the memoir as an intimate account of Sonia Gandhi’s life and a story of love, family and India, offering a perspective on the country’s “tumultuous post-independence history and its present political struggles”.

The publisher said the memoir also offers an insider’s perspective on India’s economic and social changes over six decades, while Gandhi reflects on identity, duty and the meaning of home.

Knopf Executive Vice President, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jordan Pavlin said the publishing house was “honoured” to publish the memoir, describing it as an account of Gandhi’s life, resilience, family and history.

A book description of the upcoming memoir on the website of Penguin Random House, which owns Knopf, described it as a “surprising memoir that tells a riveting personal and political story of love, family, and an endlessly fascinating country: India.”

“Most moving of all is the portrait of Sonia herself as she invites readers into her private world of joys and travails. In a voice at once perceptive and modest, she shares her insights into identity, duty, and the meaning of home. Belonging is at heart one courageous woman’s story of finding the strength to remake her life and serve her country,” it added.

With its publication scheduled for November 10, ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’ will present Sonia Gandhi’s account of a life shaped by love, family, personal loss, political duty and more than six decades of change in India.