Stormzy’s #Merky Books is to publish Olympian Caster Semenya’s memoir this year.
South African athlete Semenya, whose book is titled The Race to Be Myself, was just 18 when she won the 800m at the Berlin World Championships in 2009, but her win was quickly overshadowed by questions raised about her sex.
The double Olympic champion, who has also been world champion three times, has a condition known as hyperandrogenism, which means she has higher than usual levels of testosterone, increasing her muscle mass, strength and ability to use oxygen.
She is currently barred from running international events from 400m to a mile unless she takes medication to reduce her testosterone levels, following a ruling by the court of arbitration for sport (Cas).
Semenya took medication in 2011 after a first ruling by World Athletics. Speaking in an interview with HBO in 2022, Semenya said the medication “made me sick, made me gain weight, panic attacks”.
The athlete has twice failed to overturn Cas’s ruling, and in 2021 took her case to the European court of human rights.
With The Race to Be Myself, Semenya said she wanted to “educate, enlighten and inform about how the world can welcome those born different”.
“You may have heard some of my story over the years, and you might have seen me running or standing proudly on the podium at the Olympics,” she said. “But there is still so much I need to relate about strength, courage, love, resilience and being true to who you are. I want this book to show people around the world how to do just that.”
The book will be published on 31 October in the UK and the US. Penguin Random House’s Puffin is also due to publish an edition for young readers.
#MerkyBooks said The Race to be Myself would be told with “captivating speed, immediate candour and the spirit of defiance”, and would cover the athlete’s rural childhood, her athletic career and her legal battle, as well as give an insight into the “humiliation she has been forced to endure publicly and privately”.
Lemara Lindsay-Prince, senior commissioning editor at #Merky Books, said the book was “unflinching in its honesty” and “empowering in its tone, and captures the full scope of her life”.
