Bono has written a new memoir: ‘Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story’

Virgin Radio

11 May 2022, 12:39

U2 frontman Bono has shared material from his forthcoming memoir.

Called 'Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story', the singer has posted an animated narration of part of the book.

The book is set to be 576-pages long, and coming out in November.

Based around the origins of 40 songs in U2’s discography, each chapter of the book is named for the song it covers.

As well as explaining the songs, the book will also tell Bono’s life story.

A press release says it will include "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 shared a sample with a narration to celebrate his birthday, with a reading of the chapter ‘Out Of Control’.

Watch it below:

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.”

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.”