WikiLeaks founder memoir set for April release
The Bookseller - 10.01.11 - Graeme Neill

Canongate has confirmed it will publish the memoir of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in April.

The publisher bought world rights, excluding North America, to the title from Caroline Michel at PFD. The deal is believed to be for $1.5m. Assange previously said he wrote the book to keep Wikileaks afloat and defend himself from allegations of sexual assault. He told the Sunday Times last month: "I don’t want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat."

Alfred A Knopf will publish in the US and Canongate has already sold rights to Feltrinelli (Italy), Kiepenheuer and Witsch (Germany), Laffont (France), Text (Australia), Random House/Mondadori (Spain), De Geus (Holland), Objectiva (Portugal), Font (Norway), Norstedts (Sweden), Ara Llibres (Catalonia) and Companhia das Letras (Brazil), all of whom will be part of an internationally coordinated launch.

The publisher said the book "draws on his own fascinating life story and offers compelling insights into the mercurial and highly driven man who has forced us to radically rethink such basic ideas as transparency, democracy and power".

Assange said: "I hope this book will become one of the unifying documents of our generation. In this highly personal work, I explain our global struggle to force a new relationship between the people and their governments."