The memoir musical legend Prince was reportedly working on a before he died will be available this autumn.
USA Today reported that Random House confirmed Monday that the piece of work titled The Beautiful Ones will be available on October 29. The 288-page book was announced weeks before Prince died in 2016.
The memoir will include Prince’s “unfinished manuscript with rare photos, scrapbooks and lyrics,” the report said.
The memoir is a “deeply personal account of how Prince Rogers Nelson became the Prince we know,” Random House announced.
The book, which will include handwritten pages, covers Prince’s life — from his childhood to worldwide fame. It will contain a scrapbook of the performer’s personal photos, along with original handwritten lyric sheets for many of his most beloved songs and never-before-shared images. It will also reportedly contain the singer’s original handwritten notes for the blockbuster hit “Purple Rain.”
Literary agent Esther Newberg told Variety in 2018 that before the musical icon died, he had written more than 50 handwritten pages for the memoir, USA Today reported.
The book’s editor, Chris Jackson, said in a statement that the memoir was a “beautiful tribute” to Prince’s life, adding that the book is a “genuinely moving and energizing literary work, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image.”
“It’s a treasure not just for Prince fans but for anyone who wants to see one of our greatest creative artists and original minds at work on his greatest creation: himself.”
Writer Dan Piepenbring, who was collaborating with Prince at the time of his death, wrote the introduction to the book, which will reportedly refer to the star’s final days as “a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated,” according to the report.
Before he died, Prince told audience members at an event in New York City that he was working on the book, stating that Random House made him an offer he could not refuse, The Independent reported. He also told them that the book would begin with his first memory and go all the way until his incredible performance at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2007 when he sang “Purple Rain” while it rained.
Prince, who won seven Grammy awards and six American Music Awards, was 57-years-old when he died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl in April 2016.
