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Prince memoir to be released in autumn

The memoir Prince was working on at the time of his death will be published on October 29.

Random House confirmed The Beautiful Ones will combine his unfinished manuscript with rare photos, scrapbooks and lyrics.

First announced just weeks before his death in 2016, the 288-page book will include an introduction by New Yorker writer Dan Piepenbring, who Prince chose as a collaborator.

The memoir is an exclusive partnership with the Prince Estate.

“The Beautiful Ones is the deeply personal account of how Prince Rogers Nelson became the Prince we know: the real-time story of a kid absorbing the world around him and creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and the fame that would come to define him,” Random House announced.

The book will span from Prince’s childhood to his early years as a musician and the cusp of international stardom, using Prince’s own writings, a scrapbook of his personal photos and the original handwritten lyric sheets for many of his most iconic songs, which he kept at Paisley Park.

The book depicts Prince’s evolution through revealing, never-before-shared images and memories and culminates with his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain.

Mr Piepenbring’s introduction will touch upon the singer’s final days, “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”.

Prince died three years ago, on April 21, from an accidental overdose of fentanyl at the age of 57.

In 2018, literary agent Esther Newberg told Variety Prince had completed more than 50 handwritten pages.

The book’s editor, Chris Jackson, said The Beautiful Ones was “a beautiful tribute to his life.”

“It’s also much more than that – it’s a genuinely moving and energising literary work, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image,” he said.

“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.”