Belonging

A surprising memoir that tells a riveting personal and political story of love, family, and an endlessly fascinating country: India.

How did a girl from a small village in Italy rise as a politician in India and become known around the world?

Belonging begins in Cambridge, England, where in 1965 Sonia Maino, a nineteen-year-old student, falls in love at first sight with the handsome young man she’s destined to marry: Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

In this revelatory book, the once famously reticent Sonia Gandhi opens up with warmth and candor to narrate her remarkable life, from her childhood in post-war Italy, to the romance that brings her to India, to the shattering losses that will reshape not only her own future but also that of her adopted home.

We witness Sonia’s introduction to her formidable mother-in-law, India’s first female prime minister: Indira Gandhi. We see Sonia gain confidence by Rajiv’s side as she learns to speak Hindi, wear saris, and relish India’s cuisine. Rajiv works as a commercial airline pilot, and they raise their two children in the prime minister’s house in Delhi. But everything changes when Rajiv’s brother, Sanjay, their mother’s principal aide, is killed in a plane crash, and again in 1984 when Indira Gandhi is brutally assassinated by her security guards in the garden of her home. In the wake of his mother’s death, despite Sonia’s fears, Rajiv steps into the role of prime minister. In Sonia’s vivid, wrenching retelling, we feel the full force of the tragedy when seven years later Rajiv, too, while on his campaign trail, is assassinated, by a suicide bomber.

For several years Sonia resists the pressure to join politics, but ultimately accepts the challenge, becoming the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress Party and earning the trust and affection of millions. But after a key election, when the Congress Party selects her to be prime minister, she makes an astonishing decision—declining the highest office, choosing instead to lead her party in an alliance that will govern the country for a decade.

This dramatic account, epic yet intimate, gives readers a unique lens on India—its tumultuous post-independence history and its present political struggles, offering an insider’s keen perspective on the country’s enormous economic and social changes over sixty years. 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.