I had a pre-order for Julian Assange's autobiography but on Thursday Amazon sent me an email telling me it was no longer available notwithstanding the serialisation rights in The Independent and the mountain of books already in Waterstones. Then, I went back on the site to see that it was available afterall..........
Anyway, it has been a hard read and hardly a page turner. I think it a muddle of a book and that is probably because of the haste in which Canongate, the Edinburgh based publishers, have had to move these past few months to extradite themselves from what would have been very heavy losses. Even had they sued Assange for the first part of his advance (he has changed his mind on wanting the book published and he has been seemingly unwilling to return it) that would have only eaten up more of their funds. Had he, in the meantime, been extradited to Sweden they would have been in a difficult place. Maybe that wasn't covered off in the contract....who knows. The book has no index no doubt because of the speed of publication which had to surprise everyone including Assange's new lawyers.
There are four films in Hollywood on the Wikileaks/Assange phenomena which will all be vying for our attention over the next six months; the rush of interest must in part be because of the success of the film: Social Network about the origins of Facebook which was last year's surprise hit at the box office.
As for this book, I am sure all the publicity of the last few days will help it, but I was bitterly disappointed. Perhaps that was because I am more interested in Wikileaks than with Assange himself.