NEW DELHI: In 1980, Delhi publisher Vision Books published My Truth, the closest to an Indira Gandhi official autobiography. Printed as a series of interviews with a French journalist, it includes her childhood, Jawaharlal Nehru advising her to be physically active, touches upon her marriage and contextualises “her truths” of her momentous years— the Bangladesh Liberation War and Emergency — for all readers.
It was also not a time known for high-voltage book launches and announcements. In comparison, the notice of her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, has gone out with a bang, a bump, and again a second blow of the trumpet. While it has generated excitement about its contents, the bigger excitement has been about a story of ‘refusal’.
First came the announcement of Alfred A Knopf (an imprint of Penguin Random House) publishing it, then a clarification that Penguin India is not its India publisher, and finally the HarperCollins announcement. The publishing biggie of the year no doubt belongs to HarperCollins, which on Friday morning confirmed it was publishing Sonia’s memoir, one of the most anticipated political ‘autobiographies’ of our times.
The book hits the stands in India on November 10, 2026.
Sonia, the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party, has had both a ringside and an insider’s view of Indian politics, as a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has been at the helm of affairs for over 50 years at the Centre.
In My Truth, Indira Gandhi’s interviews with a foreign journalist were aimed at shoring up her international reputation as well. Sonia has spoken directly to her home in her own words and without any mediation.
‘A unique lens on India’
HarperCollins described the book as a “dramatic account, at once epic and intimate, [it] gives readers a unique lens on India ... offering an insider’s perspective on political, economic and social changes over 50 years.