Sonia Gandhi to Release Memoir 'Belonging' in November

Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving president of the Indian National Congress, will release her memoir titled Belonging: A Journey of Love on November 10. The book is being published by Alfred A Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The memoir will cover her childhood in Italy, her romance with former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at Cambridge, and the assassinations of her mother in law, Indira Gandhi, and her husband. Gandhi states that these losses threw her into the public world of politics after she had previously guarded her privacy.

The book will address her decision to decline the prime ministership in 2004. According to the publisher, she revisits this decision with unflinching candour. The narrative will also provide her perspective on the social, economic, and political changes she witnessed in India over six decades.

Outlets with different political leanings framed the book's purpose differently. A center leaning source emphasized the memoir as an intimate reckoning with human failings and a deeply human portrait of a woman shaped by large forces. A left leaning source framed the work as a dramatic and epic account that offers an insider's keen perspective on India's tumultuous post independence history and present political struggles.