One more book on the Tatas, this time an authorized biography of chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata (pictured Photo: Jasmine D. Driver) will hit the stands in November 2022. This has set a record in non-fiction publishing in India, with HarperCollins winning a keenly contested global auction, according to news reports. The deal was reportedly worth "more than two crore rupees (USD 1,75,000),” noted news18.com. The biography will reportedly chronicle the 84-year-old Tata’s childhood, college years and 
early influences, according to news reports. The tome will include formerly unreported details about events such as the conglomerate’s Nano project, the ouster of former chairman Cyrus Mistry and Tata Steel’s acquisition of Corus. The Times of India (ToI) of January 10 noted that "HarperCollins acquired the rights to publish the biography on January 7, 2022.”
The book is being authored by former senior bureaucrat and retired Indian Administrative Service officer, Thomas Mathew, who received access to Tata’s private papers, correspondence and photographs. To be called Tata: The Authorized Biography, the tome will be published globally in all formats (in English and principal Indian languages), read a statement issued by the publisher. The write-up added that the company "acquired world rights in all languages from Anish Chandy at Labyrinth Literary Agency.”
Mathew told ToI: "Over the last four decades, I have had the opportunity to closely observe and interact with the Indian corporate ecosystem and in the latter years with Ratan Tata and the Tata group, in particular. So, when I got the opportunity to write the story of the man whose name instantly evokes intense admiration, bordering on adulation, among people across the world, I had no doubt that it would be far and away an exciting yet daunting task.”
The authorized biography follows a slew of recent books on the 154-year-old business conglomerate. In June 2021, Penguin Random House published #TataStories by company brand custodian Harish Bhat (see "Tata tales,” Books, Parsiana, January 7-20, 2022); July saw Harvard University Press’s Tata: The Global Corporation that Built Indian Capitalism by Mircea Raianu; The Story of Tata: 1868 to 2021 by businessman Peter Casey came out in August last year from Penguin Random House; Coomi Kapoor’s The Tatas, Freddy Mercury and other Bawas: An Intimate History of the Parsis was published in July 2021 by Westland (see "Saga of the Parsis,” Books, Parsiana, October 7-20, 2021). F. J.