Tom Hanks has written his first book, a collection of short stories

One of them centres on the junket life of an actor

Actor and typewriter enthusiast Tom Hanks has been quietly working on a book of fiction outside of his film work, and it’s now set to be published by Knopf in October.

Uncommon Type: Some Stories will consist of 17 tales, the publisher announced on Tuesday, each involving a different typewriter (Hanks owns over a hundred of them).

The Academy Award-winner said in a statement:

“In the two years of working on the stories, I made movies in New York, Berlin, Budapest, and Atlanta, and wrote in all of them. I wrote in hotels during press tours. I wrote on vacation. I wrote on planes, at home, and in the office. When I could actually make a schedule, and keep to it, I wrote in the mornings from 9 to 1.”

​Stories in Uncommon Type include: “An immigrant arriving in New York City after his family and life have been torn apart by his country’s civil war; a man who bowls a perfect game (and then another, and another), becoming ESPN’s newest celebrity; an eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant on the hunt for something larger in America; and the junket life of an actor.”

Knopf editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta said he first came across Hanks’ fiction in a New Yorker short story several years ago and “was struck by both his remarkable voice and command as a writer. I had hoped there might be more stories in the works. Happily for readers, it turns out there were.”