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Headline, a division of Hachette, has acquired the rights to the memoir from Amanda Knox, who spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder between 2007 and 2015 she didn’t commit.
Yvonne Jacob, deputy publishing director acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Free: My Search for Meaning from Matilda Forbes Watson at WME.
The synopsis reads: “Free recounts how Knox survived prison, the mistakes she made and misadventures she had reintegrating into society, and culminates in the untold story of her return to Italy and the extraordinary relationship she’s built with the man who sent her to prison. It is the gripping saga of what happens when you become the definition of notorious but have quietly returned to the matters of a normal life-seeking: a life partner, finding a job, or even just going out in public.”
Jacob said: “This is the story of a young women who fought to reclaim her life in the wake of malicious persecution and attacks by a misogynistic media. Amanda’s resilience, courage and capacity to forgive are nothing short of remarkable. I’m truly honoured to be publishing this book.”
Knox said: “When my roommate, Meredith, was brutally raped and murdered, I should have been a footnote in her tragic story. Instead, at 20 years old, I was accused of a horrific crime I had nothing to do with and catapulted into international infamy. After I was exonerated, I was facing an impossible question: Now what? I could never return to being an anonymous college student. I was the girl accused of murder. I was trapped in that story. I didn’t feel free. It’s taken me over a decade, but I slowly learned to make meaning out of my misfortune. I created my own freedom. It’s been said that pain is inevitable, but that suffering is a choice. Free is a guide to making that choice and making that choice matter – in my life and in yours. Because my circumstances may be extraordinary, but the challenges I’ve faced are universal.”
Knox’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, TIME magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and many other places. She sits on the advisory council of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice and serves as an Innocence Network Ambassador.
Free: My Search for Meaning will be published in hardback, ebook and audiobook on 25th March 2025.