Review: 438 dagar

438 dagar by Johan Persson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's always a bit weird rating a biography, because in a way it feels like you're rating someone's experience of life story. You can't really complain about a bad plot or something, because, you know, it really happened, so you can't exactly change too much. For the same reason it seems so weird to say that the book was very exciting and well-paced, because, again, this is someone's life experience, you can't rate that shit.

But it is all those things. And well-written, which should be obvious since it's written by two journalists, but, yeah, being a journalist hardly means you're a good writer these days. Being a writer doesn't even mean you're a good writer. My only complain is that since it's told in multiple first person POV, their two "voices" sound very much alike and at first it was hard to distinguish between them. But you got into it fast, and as they menton that Johan Persson is dyslexic I'm assuming Martin Schibbye was behind most of the writing - hence the similarity in voices.

Of course everything in it is fucked up, but they tell it in a way so that you can still sympatize with their plight and horrible conditions ... while making it fun enough so that you want to keep reading one. It helps knowing they'll be released too, of course.

But it's probably one of the best books I've read this year, and quite possibly one of the most important ones as well.

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True story.