21 October 2026, New Delhi:
Speaking Tiger Books is delighted to announce the publication of Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed by Sangamithra Iyer.
Scheduled to release in India on 27 October 2026, this internationally acclaimed memoir draws on family history and stories of migrations to create a narrative that is as wise as it is necessary, questioning our relationships with water, land, other beings, and the very earth we live in.
Looking forward to the release, Sangamithra Iyer says: ‘Governing Bodies is a love story—a search for a radically kinder world, which feels especially urgent as we face compounding planetary crises. Blending memoir, history, poetry, and philosophy, I explore lineages of non-violence, the memory of water, and the rights of animals. As I write in the book, “What harms one body, harms all bodies. Like tributaries to the same river, our stories are entwined.”’
THE BOOK
As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to other species. And as the child of immigrants to the US, she searches for submerged histories.
This beautifully rendered memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world—and those who inhabit it—is animated by urgent and fundamental questions—How do we disentangle ourselves from systems of harm? Is it possible to grasp the scale of planetary sorrow and emerge with truth and love as our guides, rather than despair? What is the relationship between individual action and systemic change? In trying to answer them, Governing Bodies takes the form of three meandering rivers, each written as a letter. Addressing the first of them to her grandfather, Iyer assembles the story of a man who embraced Gandhi’s philosophy and went to work developing wells in Tamil Nadu. In a second letter, addressed to her father, she explores their shared interest in cultivating compassion for all beings. And then in a final letter, addressed to readers, she braids these explorations of her familial past with her own experiences of growing up and coming of age in the US, and recognizing herself as a citizen of the world. Discarding hopelessness and cynicism, she seeks to look at the natural world and our human choices with compassion and understanding.
A lyrical story of lineages and an urgently needed reckoning with the ways we control as well as liberate bodies—our own and those in the natural world— Governing Bodies is a profound work of timely relevance.
THE AUTHOR
Sangamithra Iyer is an environmental planner, engineer, and writer. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the CLMP Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction and the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She served as an editor of Satya magazine and as an associate for the environmental public policy action tank Brighter Green. Sangu is the founder of the Literary Animal Project, a habitat for conversations about how we portray animal lives on the page. She has devoted her career to watershed protection, wildlife coexistence, ecologically-rich storm-water solutions, and sustainable cities.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
‘Iyer traces her passion for conservation and animal rights activism back two generations in this beautiful debut memoir… This singular personal history edifies as much as it charms.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘Lovingly researched and beautifully written, with wit, compassion, and reverence for animals and our environments, Governing Bodies is a riveting and inspiring book…’
—Midge Raymond, Eco Lit Books Review
‘Governing Bodies beautifully guides us with the lyrical grace of someone who knows the liberation and legacy of what magic can happen when you combine the language of water and the weight of memory.’
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders
‘Reading Governing Bodies will soften you.’
—Hippocampus Magazine
ISBN: 978-93-6336-147-8 | Format: Paperback | Pages: 400 | Price: INR 699