In 2015, Nick Cave’s son Arthur fell from a cliff near Brighton and died. Arthur was 15. Since then, a great deal of Nick Cave’s work has revolved, quite understandably, around grief. Cave and the Bad Seeds’ deeply powerful 2019 album Ghosteen, in particular, worked as a meditation on loss. And now Cave will further explore that grief in a new memoir called Faith, Hope & Carnage.

According to The Bookseller, Cave co-wrote Faith, Hope & Carnage with the Irish journalist Sean O’Hagan. The book comes from more than 40 hours of conversation between Cave and O’Hagan. Canongate won the rights to publish the book at auction.

Here’s the synopsis for Faith, Hope & Carnage:

Faith, Hope & Carnage promises to be a thoughtful book about Cave’s inner life over the last six years, a meditation on big ideas including, faith, art, music, grief and much more. It is a project prompted by lockdown, and one that sits comfortably alongside Cave’s weekly mailing list “The Red Hand Files”

It is at once borne of and in some sense a tribute to the stillness—and imperative period of reflection—wrought by a global pandemic.

The Bookseller quotes Cave:

This is the first interview I’ve given in years. It’s over 40 hours long. That should do me for the duration, I think. It has been a strange, anchoring pleasure to talk to Sean O’Hagan through these uncertain times, and a pleasure to continue my relationship with Canongate, who are as ever committed and passionate.

And here’s what O’Hagan says:

This is a book of intimate and often surprising conversations in which Nick Cave talks honestly about his life, his music and the dramatic transformation of both, wrought by personal tragedy. Arranged around a series of themes — including song-writing, grief, creativity, collaboration, catastrophe, defiance and mortality — it provides deep insight into the singular mind of one of the most original and challenging artists of our time, as well as exploring the complex dynamic between faith and doubt that underpins his work.

Faith, Hope & Carnage will come out in hardback in autumn of next year. Earlier this year, Cave and his longtime collaborator Warren Ellis released the album Carnage.