The book recounts the shooting as well as her ceaseless and fearless determination, supported by her family, to stand up to the Taliban.

Immediately after the shooting, Malala was flown to a hospital in Birmingham, United Kingdom (UK), where she received treatment and underwent skull reconstruction and cochlear implant surgeries for several months. She was released last month and recently began attending school in Birmingham.

Since the shooting, Malala has become an international symbol of the campaign for girls’ right to an education. She has been awarded numerous prizes and awards for her outstanding courage and sacrifice, including The Times of London’s “Young Person of the Year” and France’s 2012 Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom. Malala has also become the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

The Malala Fund was established on her behalf to promote education and girl empowerment in Pakistan and around the world and July 12 has been declared the United Nations Malala Day. The young Pakistani activist’s father has been appointed a UN educational advisor at the Consulate of Pakistan for the next three years.

In a release about her upcoming book, Malala reveals: “I hope the book will reach people around the world, so they realize how difficult it is for some children to get access to education. I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61 million children who can’t get (an) education. I want it to be part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school. It is their basic right.”

In the U.S., Malala’s book will be published in October by Little, Brown, while in the UK, it will be printed by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. The publishing deal is allegedly worth £2 million ($3 million). According to Michael Pietsch, the executive vice-president and publisher of Little Brown, “Malala is already an inspiration to millions around the world. Reading her story of courage and survival will open minds, enlarge hearts, and eventually allow more girls and boys to receive the education they hunger for.”

In an excerpt from the book, Malala writes: “I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday. It was Tuesday, October 9, 2012, not the best of days as it was the middle of school exams, though as a bookish girl I don’t mind them as much as my friends do. We’d finished for the day and I was squashed between my friends and teachers on the benches of the open-back truck we use as a school bus. There were no windows, just thick plastic sheeting that flapped at the sides and was too yellowed and dusty to see out of, and a postage stamp of open sky at the back through which I caught a glimpse of a kite wheeling up and down. It was pink, my favorite color.”