New Delhi,: Penguin Random House India is proud to launch the audiobook version of Me and Ma, award-winning actor Divya Dutta’s debut book which was published by Penguin in 2017. The audiobook is available on all major online audiobook platforms.

Penguin Random House India is one of the only publishing houses in the country currently publishing its own audiobooks. Me and Ma audiobook will join the league of many bestselling titles turned into audiobooks – Life’s Amazing Secrets by Gaur Gopal Das, An Unsuitable Boy by Karan Johar, The Unusual Billionaires by Saurabh Mukherjea and Land of Seven Seas by Sanjeev Sanyal among many others. With the aim of making the listening experience more intimate and immersive, the publishing house worked with the talented actor to tell her life story not only in her own words, but also in her own voice.

Reviewed as a ‘candid’, ‘conversational’ and ‘unconventional’ celebrity autobiography, Me and Ma is a tribute to mother-daughter relationships, inspired by the actor’s own relationship with her mother, Dr Nalini Dutta. In the book, Divya walks us through the most cherished memories of her life that strengthened her relationship with her mother. The incredible bond she forged with her mother helped her through good times and bad and led to her becoming an award-winning actor in the Indian film industry. With the audiobook version of this book, Divya Dutta gives new voice to her written words, and expands the scope of the book to a wider readership and opens it up to a brand- new audience.

Vaishali Mathur, publisher, Indian Languages Publishing, Penguin Random House India, says, ‘I’m very sure that the audio of this book, which is a heartfelt tribute to her mother, is going to be a treat for our readers and Divya’s fans. Divya’s voice modulation and expression are incomparable and this time it will be a combination of emotion and powerful reading.’

Speaking about her experience with the audiobook, Divya Dutta says, ‘Me and Maa opened a beautiful path for me to connect with my readers as an author. The kind of love I got for the book was gratifying, we thought we must release it in audio format as well. It adds so much more with the audio as the feelings can truly be felt. For me it has been a personal journey of writing the book about my mother and then narrating it myself.’

Natasha Kapur, SVP, Marketing and Digital, Penguin Random House India, says, ‘From the written word to the spoken word, we believe an author lending his or her voice to his or her own book can become a complete journey for the author and his readers. Audiobooks of intimate genres such as autobiographies and memoirs benefit when the writers narrate their own stories in their own voices. We have observed this trend with the success of Priyanka Chopra Jona’s Unfinished or even Michelle Obama’s Becoming. The sudden lockdown last year also opened doors wider for readers to adopt audiobooks, and we saw Ruskin Bond’s chapter books, Sudha Murty’s How the Onion Got Its Layers receive a lot of love from readers old and new. With more and more people multitasking, audiobook becomes an easy way to keep in touch with one’s reading habits, and an author narrated book can often seem special and an effective way to connect with the writer.’

Title: Me And Ma
Author: Divya Dutta
Publisher: Penguin
Available: Amazon