Synopsis
Daring, flashy, innovative, volatile—no matter what they call him, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of soccer’s brightest stars. A top-scoring striker and captain of the Swedish national team, he has dominated the world’s most storied teams, including Ajax, Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona, AC Milan, and Paris Saint-Germain. But his life wasn’t always so charmed.
Born to Balkan immigrants who divorced when he was a toddler, Zlatan learned self-reliance from his rough-and-tumble neighborhood. While his father, a Bosnian Muslim, drank to forget the war back home, his mother’s household was engulfed in chaos. Soccer was Zlatan’s release. Mixing in street moves and trick plays, Zlatan was a wild talent who rode to practice on stolen bikes and relished showing up the rich kids—opponents and teammates alike. Goal by astonishing goal, the brash young outsider grew into an unlikely prodigy and, by his early twenties, an international phenomenon.
Told as only the man himself could tell it, featuring stories of friendships and feuds with the biggest names in the sport, I Am Zlatan is a wrenching, uproarious, and ultimately redemptive tale for underdogs everywhere.
Praise for I Am Zlatan
“Terrific . . . Far more insightful than your typical jock memoir, Ibra’s book tells his story of growing up as the son of immigrants in Sweden and pulls no punches when it comes to his opinions of some of the biggest names in the game.”—Sports Illustrated
“The most compelling autobiography ever to appear under a footballer’s name.”—The Guardian
“The story of Zlatan—from his days as an immigrant kid juggling a soccer ball so he won’t get bullied to his emergence as the genius player who scored the greatest goal ever—is as compelling and fancy-footed as his game.”—Aleksandar Hemon, National Book Award finalist and author of The Lazarus Project
“I love this book. I love it because it’s so much bigger than soccer. I Am Zlatan is a story of hope and grit and what an immigrant kid who comes from nothing can accomplish with hard work and belief in himself. It’s also a beautiful window into our new, more open, more diverse world.”—Marcus Samuelsson, bestselling author of Yes, Chef
“Probably the bestselling European immigrant’s tale since Zadie Smith’s White Teeth . . . Once you get past the obligatory snigger prompted by the phrase ‘footballer’s autobiography,’ you can see that Zlatan’s book strangely resembles an earlier immigrant’s tale: Portnoy’s Complaint.”—Financial Times
“He is skillful. He is outspoken. He is Zlatan.”—The New York Times
“The best sports autobiography in years.”—PolicyMic
About the Author
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is a professional soccer player, one of the world’s most prolific strikers, and captain of his native Sweden. He has played for many of Europe’s top teams, including Ajax, Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona, AC Milan, and, currently, Paris Saint-Germain, where he is the league’s leading goalscorer. He is widely regarded as one of the best soccer players of his generation, and is the most highly valued player of all time in combined transfer fees. His bicycle kick for Sweden against England won the 2013 FIFA Award for Goal of the Year.
David Lagercrantz made his debut as an author with Ultimate High: My Everest Odyssey, about the Swedish mountaineer Göran Kropp, which became an international bestseller. Since then he has devoted his career to writing about geniuses and exceptional people who go against the flow and blaze their own trails. Lagercrantz achieved critical and commercial success with a novel based on the life of the computer pioneer Alan Turing. He has written several other works of fiction and nonfiction, and he also lectures on creative writing.
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