In just four words, Edward Snowden, the game-changing whistleblower, dropped another bombshell on Thursday: “I wrote a book.”

A former employee for the CIA, Snowden, in 2013 at the age of 29, leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency that revealed troubling global surveillance programs run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance, forever changing the discussion on government surveillance and personal privacy. Now, with the newly announced memoir Permanent Record, Snowden, 36, is ready to tell his own story.

“Everything that we do now lasts forever, not because we want to remember but because we’re no longer allowed to forget,” he says in a video reveal for the book announcement. “Helping to create that system is my greatest regret.”

I wrote a book. pic.twitter.com/wEdlOFMnMn — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 1, 2019

Permanent Record will be published globally by Macmillan Publishers this Sep. 17, which happens to be Constitution Day.

Says John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Publishers USA, “Edward Snowden decided at the age of 29 to give up his entire future for the good of his country. He displayed enormous courage in doing so, and like him or not, his is an incredible American story. There is no doubt that the world is a better and more private place for his actions. Macmillan is enormously proud to publish Permanent Record.”

According to the official synopsis, the memoir will span “the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood” in telling “the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online―a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience.”

Snowden’s story was dramatized in Oliver Stone’s 2016 film, in which he was portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

“So I just completed an international conspiracy across twenty countries, and somehow the secret never leaked,” Snowden tweeted as a follow-up. “On Constitution Day, the result will be on shelves worldwide.”

So I just completed an international conspiracy across twenty countries, and somehow the secret never leaked. On Constitution Day, the result will be on shelves worldwide. https://t.co/qH7W1V89px — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 1, 2019

Permanent Record will be published in the U.S. through Metropolitan Books. Pan Macmillan will handle publishing for the U.K., Australia, India, and South Africa, while S. Fischer Verlag will handle the release in Germany.

Pre-orders are currently available.

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