Edward Snowden to come out with memoir next month

Former CIA agent and NSA contractor Edward Snowden will come out with his memoir, recounting how he created a system of mass surveillance and made the biggest leak till date.

Permanent Record will be published globally by Macmillan Publishers on September 17, it was announced Thursday.

In 2013, Snowden shocked the world when he parted with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the US government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every phone call, text message, and email ever sent.

The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth.

In Permanent Record, he tells his story for the very first time, bringing the reader along as he helps to create this system of mass surveillance, and then experiences the crisis of conscience that led him to try to bring it down, a statement said.

In the UK, Australia, India, and South Africa, the memoir will be published by Pan Macmillan; in the US by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt; and in Germany by S Fischer Verlag, it added.

The book has been edited by Metropolitan Books under the leadership of Sara Bershtel, senior vice-president and publisher.

Edward Snowden decided at the age of 29 to give up his entire future for the good of his country, said John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Publishers.

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, he added.