Bono announces new memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story
11 May 2022, 15:00
The U2 frontman has detailed an upcoming book, which is set to be released in November
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Bono is set to release the memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.
The U2 frontman's upcoming book will see him chronicle his life and career through 40 songs, drawing fans in on everything from his early beginnings in Ireland to his life as an influential figurehead and activist.
A press release explains that Surrender will recall key moments "from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was 14, to U2’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his 20 years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty."
Bono said in a statement: "When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs.
"The people, places, and possibilities in my life. 'Surrender' is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept.
"A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress… with a fair amount of fun along the way.”
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Editor and publisher Reagan Arthur added: “All of the passion that Bono brings to his music and his life he also brings to the page. Seven years ago another legend, the late Knopf editor Sonny Mehta, acquired the book, because he knew Bono fits into the tradition of literary Irish storytellers, and we were lucky to have Sonny’s notes on an early draft of the manuscript.
"We’re luckier still that Bono not only has a dramatic personal history to tell, but he’s also a truly gifted writer. Surrender is honest, intimate, irreverent, and profound – a dazzling memoir of a remarkable life.”
The With or Without You singer has already given fans a preview of the book with the chapter Out Of Control.
Watch the animated narration, which features some of Bono's own drawings, here:
Out Of Control - 'SURRENDER: 40 Songs, One Story' by Bono
The print edition and audiobook version of 'Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story' will be released on 1st November via Alfred A. Knopf and Penguin Random House.
