HarperCollins India will publish “Belonging: A Journey of Love” by Sonia Gandhi, the publisher announced Friday, just over a week after Penguin Random House India stepped away from the project.
HarperCollins confirmed via Instagram that it will publish Sonia Gandhi’s long-awaited memoir in India on November 10, 2026, calling it one of the most anticipated political memoirs of the era — the same date the book releases in the United States. The publisher described “Belonging” as a dramatic and deeply personal story of love, identity, duty and belonging, offering a rare insider’s view of India’s political journey.
Why Penguin Stepped Aside
The book was originally slated for release through Penguin Random House India, but publication stalled after the publisher and the author’s legal team reached an impasse over a specific issue. Reports indicate Penguin cited “editorial veracity challenges” concerning certain parts of the memoir.
For its part, Penguin Random House India stated that Sonia Gandhi’s team had informed them they did not wish to proceed with the publication, and that since the company was bound by a confidentiality agreement, it would not divulge further details of what led to the impasse.
What’s in the Book
The memoir traces Sonia Gandhi’s extraordinary journey — beginning in Cambridge, England, in 1965, when a nineteen-year-old Sonia Maino fell in love at first sight with Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. It follows her path from childhood in post-World War 2 Italy to her life in India, her marriage to the future Prime Minister, and decades at the center of Indian politics.
The book is expected to address the scrutiny over her Italian origins and the pressure to prove her “Indianness,” her entry into politics, the Congress party’s strong showing in the 2004 general election, and her role in stitching together the UPA coalition that governed until 2014.
Gandhi grew up in the Piedmontese village of Sangano near Turin, studied English in Cambridge, and moved to India in 1968 to marry Rajiv Gandhi. After his assassination, she published a pictorial biography of him and a book of his photographs, and had earlier edited two volumes of correspondence between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
The controversy over the book’s Indian publication stems from US publisher Alfred A. Knopf’s original announcement of the memoir. Industry observers noted the switch as “one publisher’s loss” becoming “another’s gain,” with HarperCollins moving quickly to secure a title expected to be among the year’s biggest political publishing events in India.