What made senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, who was born in Italy and once fiercely guarded her privacy, enter Indian politics after two devastating personal losses and what made her turn down the country’s top political office when it appeared within reach? Her memoir, “Belonging: A Journey of Love”, is set to offer these answers.Alfred A Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced on Tuesday that the memoir will be published on November 10. The book traces Sonia’s journey from post-war Italy to the heart of Indian politics, covering her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv, her entry into politics and her years at the helm of the Congress.Sonia (79) said the memoir was an attempt to look beyond the political mythology surrounding the Nehru-Gandhi family and bring out the people behind it — their motivations, choices and human failings. “Much has been written about my family, but few narratives were able to reach into the truth of their motivations, their actions and even their very human failings. In many ways, this book is a homage to their humanness. My story also offers readers a unique perspective of the social and political changes I have witnessed for six decades in the beautiful country of my belonging,” Sonia said in a statement issued through Knopf.The story begins not in Delhi but in Cambridge, England, where Sonia Maino, then a 19-year-old student from Italy, met Rajiv in 1965.The meeting would change the course of her life, taking her from a small-town childhood in Italy into the Nehru-Gandhi family and, eventually, to the centre of Indian public life.“In this revelatory book, the once famously reticent Sonia opens up with warmth and candour 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,” the publisher’s description said.The memoir follows her introduction to Indira, India’s first woman Prime Minister, and her early years with Rajiv, who worked as a commercial airline pilot. The couple raised their two children, Rahul and Priyanka, in the Prime Minister’s residence in Delhi.Then came tragedy. Rajiv’s younger brother Sanjay died in a plane crash in 1980. Four years later, on October 31, 1984, Indira was assassinated by two of her bodyguards at her official residence in New Delhi.Rajiv, who had not been expected to become Prime Minister, was suddenly thrust into the country’s top political office. For Sonia, it was a turning point that brought the Nehru-Gandhi family’s private grief into the centre of national politics.Seven years later, she suffered another devastating loss. On May 21, 1991, Rajiv was assassinated during an election campaign in Tamil Nadu by a suicide bomber linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.“It was heartbreak and loss that threw me into the public world of politics. Until then, I had guarded my privacy fiercely,” Sonia said.She resisted the pressure to enter politics for several years before eventually accepting the challenge. She went on to become the longest-serving president of the Congress.However, her most consequential political decision came after the 2004 Lok Sabha election.The Congress emerged as the largest party and formed the United Progressive Alliance. Sonia, as Congress president and UPA chairperson, was widely expected to become the Prime Minister. She declined.Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister while Sonia remained outside the government and led the Congress-led alliance. The UPA government completed two terms and remained in power for a decade.The decision remains one of the defining moments of her political career and is expected to be an important part of the memoir. The publisher describes it as an “astonishing decision” in which she chose to lead the alliance that would govern the country rather than occupy the highest office herself.For a woman whose public life began with personal tragedy, the memoir also appears to be an attempt to understand how grief gradually became political responsibility.“Writing about my life did not come easily to me. It meant opening myself up, sharing moments and experiences I had always held deep inside. Yet as I gradually removed myself from the political sphere and looked back at all I had seen, the thread of love and loyalty that wove through my story began to define itself,” Sonia said.That thread, she says, runs from “the simplicity of my childhood in small-town Italy” to the “complexity” of years in India as Rajiv’s wife and Indira’s daughter-in-law.The publisher’s description places that personal journey against six decades of India’s political and social transformation, while also examining identity, duty and the meaning of home.