I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, David Lagercrantz

I AM ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC is the one and only autobiography of and by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Sweden’s most successful football player ever and one of the greatest players in the world today. Zlatan’s story is one of both hardships and amazing success. We follow Zlatan from his childhood in the rough immigrant suburbs of Rosengård outside Malmö, to the discovery of his unique talent and his time with some of the major European football clubs; Ajax, Juventus, Inter, Barcelona and Milan.

This unique story is now sold to 27 countries, among them Germany, France, Italy and the UK. It is not your ordinary sports biography – it is a story with great literary qualities about an amazingly successful boy growing into a man, and the absolute essence of football.

The autobiography was told by Zlatan and penned by David Lagercrantz, known in Sweden for both amazing biographies and highly praised literary novels. Through long hours of interviewing Zlatan, Lagercrantz managed to capture Zlatan’s personal, and never before told, story. It also let’s us hear the true voice of an immigrant street kid who is now one of the top ten highest paid football players in the world.

I AM ZLATAN was short listed for the Football Book of the Year at the 2014 British Sports Book Awards.

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”Oh my God, this is explosive!”
– Simon Bank, Aftonbladet

“… the genre [footballers’ autobiographies] may now be entering a golden age, I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, perhaps the best recent autobiography by a footballer, has at last appeared in English … a modern European fairy tale.”
– Simon Kuper in New Statesman

“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