Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s political memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, continued to draw considerable interest across the country on Wednesday, a day after its release, with readers thronging bookstores and placing orders on e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms.
While platforms were unwilling to share sales figures, people associated with the publishing industry, bookstore owners and e-commerce platforms were unanimous that they could not recall the last time a memoir had generated such interest. Some predicted it could even be the decade’s biggest book launch across genres.
Some said most buyers were in the 25-50 age group. Others expressed surprise that Penguin Random House India (PRHI), which was initially set to publish the book, later withdrew from the project.
Gandhi told The Guardian in an interview published last week that Penguin was “uneasy in general with the criticism of the government” and dropped the book after she refused edits. Penguin has maintained that it withdrew from the project after standard editorial and fact-checking discussions reached an impasse. HarperCollins India eventually published the book, releasing it on November 10, while Alfred A Knopf published the US edition.
In the national capital, bookstores have come alive with crowds of readers. “I have grown up in this bookstore and I cannot recall when we witnessed such frenzy for one particular book,” said Abhinav Bamhi, fourth-generation owner of Faqir Chand Bookstore in New Delhi’s Khan Market. The store had sold more than 100 copies by Wednesday afternoon.
“The last time a book brought so many readers to the stores was in 2007, for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But that was in an era when e-commerce hadn’t gained much popularity,” Bamhi said.
Based on the numbers queuing up at his bookstore, he said Gandhi’s memoir could become the decade’s biggest launch across all genres in Indian publishing. Most buyers across stores are in the 25-50 age group, he added.
The book has seen brisk sales beyond Khan Market, whose patrons were once described by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “Khan Market Gang” in an apparent reference to the city’s elite. Across major cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata, readers queued up to buy the memoir.
Sales have been equally brisk online. Gandhi’s memoir is available on e-commerce platforms Amazon and Flipkart, as well as quick-commerce platform Blinkit. On Blinkit, the book is priced at ₹849, a discount of ₹450 on its maximum retail price, although availability appeared limited to select locations. A quick check showed that the book was out of stock in some locations but available in others, including parts of Delhi.
A senior executive at a leading e-commerce company said the book had generated significant interest on the platform. An executive at another e-commerce firm said search queries for the memoir were substantially higher than those typically recorded during launches of books in the political genre. However, the platforms declined to share sales figures, citing confidentiality obligations and contractual restrictions.
Most bookstores visited by Business Standard on Tuesday and Wednesday said that up to 70 per cent of their total sales had come from Belonging. Touseef Mirza, owner of South Delhi’s Midland Bookshop, which has several stores across Delhi and its suburbs, said the chain had sold more than 500 copies of the book over the past two days through its physical stores and website.
“Even our customers who are not actively political readers are showing an interest in the book for the sake of knowing her journey,” Mirza said.
Sources in the publishing industry said they were intrigued that Penguin had let go of the opportunity to publish Gandhi’s memoir. A bookstore owner, who did not wish to be named, agreed. “All we can say is that it’s Penguin’s loss. Some of this demand was expected, and it was identified by HarperCollins,” the owner said.
At Bahrisons Booksellers, a few metres from Faqir Chand Bookstore in Khan Market, people queued up outside the shop, with several clicking pictures with the book and posting them on social media.
“I am buying it because I am keen to know the first-hand experiences of a politician who hasn’t spoken much in public about many things,” a buyer said.
The memoir has also generated considerable interest on social media. Readers posted pictures of themselves with the book and shared short excerpts, including passages about the grief Gandhi experienced as a young mother after losing her premature baby.
