This is an unauthorised autobiography. In keeping with the controversial nature of everything he does, Assange, after collaborating with the publisher and ghost writer, decided to renege on the deal he had made, and refused to sanction the publishing of his book.
It's difficult to understand why, because he generally comes out of it well. But because he had already signed his advance over to his lawyers to settle his legal bills, Canongate Books felt justified in going ahead.
Intrigue, conspiracies, secrets, scandals? They are all here ... I began this book with such enthusiasm, wanting to know how his passion for justice started, how he achieved his mastery of computing skills, what in his background motivated him. And whether or not he would shed any light on how he happens to be in the thick of a fight against extradition to Sweden on two charges of rape.
It starts with Assange in prison in London. For someone who has lived his life to value freedoms above all else, being in prison is a Kafkaesque experience.
[1] WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the High Court in London last month. Photo by Reuters. For one who claims that his mission in life is to expose corruption and the misuse of powers that keep the world unfair, it is a stifling abuse of his values.
He is there because of the controversial rape charges. Before a previous brush with the law, he has read Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, which brings clarity to his position, makes him "understand the meaning of empathy" and gives him strength.
He has been a reader since childhood - "a book can make you feel less lonely". In Wandsworth he reads Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward and loses himself "in the old wisdom about inhumanity and the solace of a good book".
He would have needed books as a child. Born in Townsville, he travelled extensively throughout the remainder of his childhood and attended over 30 different schools.
His mother and stepfather, Brett Assange, were Bohemian and worldly, earned their living doing mainly puppet shows with a small fold-up theatre, "designed sets and read books". The Queensland town of Lismore was the one they related to best, being a popular place for less conventional Australians.
If there was a cause they believed in, they supported it, and their son was encouraged to question conventional thinking, rather than automatically accept things the way they were. Assange writes fondly of his stepfather and, although the marriage ended by the time he was 9, he was happy to keep his name.
When he was 16, he encountered his first computer and describes the feeling of excitement as "barely containable".
He became one of a worldwide subculture of fellow computer enthusiasts who could crack codes, write programs and hack into secret information.
"Hacking began to seem like a creative endeavour to us: it was a way of getting over the high walls set up to protect power, and making a difference." Shortly, these extraordinarily talented self-taught amateurs narrowed to a tightly knit, anarchistic group of three, who had begun by having fun, but "ended up wanting to change the world".
Since their version of changing the world translated to breaking the law, all three were finally arrested, with Assange lucky not to receive a custodial sentence.
His next move was to take maths and physics at Melbourne University. For someone who had such a peripatetic childhood, with little mention of schooling [except for a positive reference to one deeply admired teacher], this decision was a brave but ultimately successful one.
He became enchanted with what he saw as the clarity and "entire moral scope" of quantum mechanics to the extent where he represented his university at the Australian National Physics Competition. This was his next step in his gradual movement towards the formation of "WikiLeaks".
The enthusiasm with which I started the book did wane a little as I left the more personal aspects, the fascinating childhood, the well-described love affair he had with the computer.
Assange wanted to cancel the contract with the publishers because he regarded it as too personal, declaring that "all memoir is prostitution" but, like any good memoir, those bits were the most interesting.
When he discusses the motivation, organisation, personnel and methodology of WikiLeaks, there is much detail and a lot of repetition of his philosophies along with much self-justification of his motives.
The impression gained is of an extremely clever, dedicated, prickly and passionate individual who has risked scorn, praise, personal danger and privation in the pursuit of his goals.
Near the book's beginning he states, "what I opposed, and continue to oppose, is the use of secrecy by institutions to protect themselves against the truth of the evil they have done".
He also believes that time has taught him "the ways of smearing and avenging that are characteristic of the powerful when they are forced into a corner". As a reader, you are left wondering if the present dilemma he is in is part of those ways.
- Patricia Thwaites is a retired schoolteacher.
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