I Am Zlatan: My Story On and Off the Field

Daring, flashy, innovative, volatileno matter what they call him, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of soccer's brightest stars.

A top-scoring striker with Paris Saint-Germain and captain of the Swedish national team, he has dominated the world's most storied teams, including Ajax, Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona, and AC Milan.

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 kidsopponents 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 ';The most compelling autobiography ever to appear under a footballer's name.'The Guardian ';The story of Zlatanfrom 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 everis 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 Zlatanis 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 ofYes, Chef ';Probably the bestselling European immigrant's tale since Zadie Smith'sWhite 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.'FinancialTimesFrom the Trade Paperback edition.