Review: Jag är Zlatan

Jag är Zlatan: Zlatans egen berättelse by David Lagercrantz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Obviously there was a lot of fuzz about this book when it came out and it sold a lot of copies (unless I'm misremembering) ... but I can't recall that I heard anything about it once it was published. Did people like it? I mean, Zlatan fans probably did, but just random book readers? I have no idea.

I did like it, although I'd hardly consider myself a fan (though his recent stunt to support the World Food Programme certainly made me like him a lot more, as did this). Still, he's one of the most famous people in this country, so of course reading his biography was cool either way.

It's not written by Zlatan, but David Lagercrantz has done a great job in showing Z's voice through-out the book: at first the spoken language annoyed me, but honestly, that was the only way to write it. All the "you know what I mean", and "and do you know what happened next?" and other times where he addresses the reader makes it seems like you're just sitting around listening to Zlatan talk about his life rather than reading a book, and it was nice.

It's also a lot funnier than I expected it to be? Not only because an entire page is dedicated to a small pic of a pug eating pizza (though that is hilarious), but because a lot of the phrasing is just fun to read ("två Kalle Ankor från Aftonbladet" - I can't even translate that). And of course, the first half of the book is 90%: "Then they were upset with me because they thought I had done [Thing]. And sure, I had done [Thing], but still, rude" or "I was called into a meeting and you know how it goes, my first thought was: shit, did I steal a bike again?", which gets funnier the longer it goes on.

Zlatan kinda glosses over a lot of the bad stuff he's done, especially anything regarding physical violence, but he also does own up to it, and never pretends like he didn't fight someone (or steal bikes) or that it wasn't a bad thing, though he often makes it sounds like it's something just happened and not something he did. While I don't exactly love that, I also think that a lot of famous people have gotten away with a LOT worse with way less retribution.

You might enjoy this a little more if you're actually into football, since there's a lot of names and teams and leagues and whatnot that I just can't keep up with (I honestly had to text my brother to help him clarify a part of the book), but I'd still say it's one of the funnier biographies I've read. It gets repetetive, sure, but it's also part of the charm, as are the sidetracks: "When this was going on I was home playing video games. It was either this or that game, I can't remember, but they're both great games. Anyway ...", because it adds to that whole "you're not reading a book you're listening to someone telling you a story feel", and that's probably the book's biggest strenght.

View all my reviews

True story.