‘A life too immense for only one book’: Cher announces two-part memoir

Cher’s two-part memoir finally has a release date. Cher: The Memoir, Part One will be released on 19 November by Dey Street Books, an imprint of the William Morrow Group at HarperCollins Publishers.

Related: Cher: ‘My life seems to be longer than any other human being ever’

Part Two will follow in spring of 2025, the publisher announced on Wednesday.

“After more than 70 years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir,” the publisher said in a statement. “With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.”

The first installment will cover the singer’s early life as a dyslexic child in a chaotic household, and her marriage to her fellow entertainer Sonny Bono – “the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart”.

Known as the singing duo Sonny & Cher, the couple married in 1964 and co-hosted the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and The Sonny & Cher Show. Cher filed for divorce in 1974, which was finalized a year later.

The singer shared one child, Chaz, with Bono. She is also mother to Elijah Blue Allman, whom she had with her second husband, the late Gregg Allman of the southern rock group the Allman Brothers Band.

Cher also took to Instagram to reveal the cover, first reported by the Today show, featuring a black and white photo of her face. The 78-year-old singer first teased her highly anticipated book in 2017, telling the Hollywood Reporter as recently as last year: “Well, we’re almost finished because [HarperCollins] goes, ‘Cher, how long are you going to work on this?’ That’s difficult too, but we’re so close.”

Her long-gestating story was described by the publisher as “a life too immense for only one book”.

The singer herself has said the writing process was long and difficult. “I just totally chickened out. I didn’t put in some things that need to be in, and they’re not comfortable,” she told Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show last November. “But they need to be put in, so I have to go back and man up.”

“My life seems to be longer than any other human being ever,” she told the Guardian in October 2023. “I feel like I should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for this. And I’m still going!”