SRINAGAR: Speaking Tiger Books will release veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi’s memoir, The World Was Not Their Story: Odyssey of an Indian Reporter, nationwide on September 29, 2026, chronicling his six-decade career covering world events across 110 countries.
Featuring archival photographs, the memoir offers an account of global history witnessed at close quarters by one of India’s prominent journalists, whose reporting was driven by the conviction that India needed to see the world through its own eyes rather than rely predominantly on Western media narratives.
Naqvi’s career began at The Statesman in the 1960s, where he gained recognition with an exclusive report on the Beatles in Rishikesh. He later earned the confidence of Jayaprakash Narayan while covering the Bihar movement.
At The Indian Express, his association with its owner, Ramnath Goenka, brought him into the newspaper’s editorial battles and political controversies, particularly during the Emergency.
After leaving the newspaper in 1984, Naqvi established World Report, a news agency aimed at placing Indian journalists at the scene of international events and providing foreign coverage from an Indian perspective. He edited the agency from 1986 to 2004.
Over the course of his career, Naqvi reported from 110 countries, often as the only Indian journalist on the ground. His assignments included the 1971 JVP insurrection in Sri Lanka, the Sino-Vietnamese War and the TWA 847 hijacking in Beirut. He also witnessed Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and interviewed international figures, including Fidel Castro, Mikhail Gorbachev, Muammar Gaddafi and Israeli prime ministers.
His reporting took him to Iran during the Islamic Revolution and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, besides conflict zones and politically turbulent regions such as Rwanda, Sudan, Haiti, Kosovo, Gaza, Kabul, Nicaragua and Northern Ireland.
The memoir also examines the practical challenges of international reporting before mobile phones, when correspondents had to navigate communication constraints, unpredictable circumstances and limited resources to cover events far from home.
According to the publisher, the book goes beyond a personal account of a journalist’s career to examine the limitations of India’s foreign coverage, which has often depended on international news agencies and publications based in London and Washington.
The narrative reflects Naqvi’s effort to broaden the horizons of Indian journalism and challenge the dominance of Western perspectives in the coverage of global affairs.
Naqvi has worked in print and television journalism, serving as a foreign correspondent and editor at The Statesman and The Indian Express. His work has also appeared in international publications, including The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Salem Evening News and The Boston Globe.
The book is being published by Speaking Tiger Books.
