New Delhi, Agency
HarperCollins India has announced the publication of Sonia Gandhi’s much-anticipated memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, which will hit bookstores across India on November 10, 2026.
Described as a deeply personal account of love, identity, duty and belonging, the memoir offers an insider’s perspective on Sonia Gandhi’s extraordinary journey from a small village in Italy to the centre of Indian politics, while also chronicling five decades of India’s political and social transformation.
The book begins in Cambridge, England, in 1965, when 19-year-old Sonia Maino met Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Their relationship eventually brought her to India, where she married Rajiv Gandhi in 1968 and began a new life in a country vastly different from her childhood home in post-war Italy.
In Belonging, Sonia Gandhi reportedly writes candidly about her early years in India, her relationship with her mother-in-law, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and her efforts to adapt to Indian life—including learning Hindi, wearing saris and embracing Indian food and culture.
The memoir also recounts the tragedies that transformed the Gandhi family and altered the course of Indian politics. The death of Rajiv Gandhi’s younger brother Sanjay in an aircraft crash, followed by the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, brought Rajiv into national politics and eventually to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Sonia Gandhi offers a personal account of the years that followed, including Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister, the family’s travels across India and abroad, and the devastating assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 while he was campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections.
Following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Sonia Gandhi chose to remain in India despite advice from her family in Italy to return home. Her subsequent entry into politics ultimately saw her become the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress.
The memoir also revisits one of the most consequential decisions of her political career. After the Congress-led alliance emerged victorious in a key national election, Sonia Gandhi declined the opportunity to become Prime Minister of India and instead chose to lead the Congress and its alliance, which went on to govern the country for a decade.
HarperCollins describes Belonging as both an intimate family story and a wider political narrative, offering Sonia Gandhi’s perspective on India’s post-Independence history, its political struggles and its economic and social changes over five decades.
At its heart, the book is presented as the story of a woman who found a new home in India, experienced profound personal loss and ultimately entered public life in a country that had become her adopted home.
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