Nuri Kino

While this book might never reach a big audience, I must mention a few things.

First, don't read a book that hasn't been proof-read. This book contains more spelling-errors and weird copy-pasting than the number of times you will be able to count the phrase "The King's Friends", "The Swedish Godfather" or the number of times the author refers to his own work as being acclaimed, awarded and unique, in this book.

This actually questions the gist of what actually makes a book a book. It's a swirl of ramblings, more than anything else, starting off by stating that Milan Sevo could be dangerous, could be a business-man, could be maltreated by the Swedish government, hints of... Well, nothing, really.

We hear how some suburban kids mill away on how Sevo is a Godfather. We never hear what a Godfather actually is (to the author); the author continually refers to Sevo as "The Swedish Godfather" with the capital letters just so, beating his own drum a lot more than doing something (else). He fashions Sevo's reputation in a very weird way. It's not just because the book is (as previously mentioned) very badly edited, but also because the outlines of the book are scrambled and the reader is left with a very botched job where one expected a biography. It contains passages dedicated to the author's own life which have very little - if anything - to do with anything but a lack of material: the author eats "a steaming bowl" of something. He sits somewhere. He walks. He mentions the colours of peoples' clothing. It's beyond stream-of-consciousness, and here I'm honestly really grasping for something good to say regarding this mess.

Points made by the author are left hanging in mid-air without made points, meaning very little to anybody but the author; it's breathless where it should be breathtaking.

As the book progressed into what I suppose are Sevo's own words on his life from birth till now, the story goes from clueless to sob-story. There's some interesting bits on Sevo's adolescence, but all in all nothing that "Scarface" or "The Godfather" can't fashion for you. There's a lot of "I was set-up" and "I thought of my kids a lot when some people inexplicably came to try to kill me - why did they? Oh I grew up without a dad and now the Swedish police are freezing my bank accounts, did I tell you about that time they--".

By this time, in the book, I honestly think the author has lost the plot completely. Not in a fragmented-yet-at-times-lucid Colonel Kurtz or radiant Hunter S. Thompson-ish or William S. Burroughs-y way at all, even at the latter's worst.

These are jaded themes, descriptions of enforced stereotypes and a not-really subconscious wish on the author's part to be one of the boys, one of The Boys - yeah, if I use big letters at the beginning of some words, maybe they'll turn more realer - and in on the things that were once exciting, and not this bastard writing business.

Jonathan Franzen once wrote - and I paraphrase - that the culture which has turned "liking" from being an adjective into a verb can be very self-indulgent, narcissistic and filtering. This is like that; it's worse. This book is a showcase, trying very hard to be something it's not, and easy to see through. A rush-job. A desperation; a deal turned to the printers as soon as possible.

There are so many sad bits in this book, e.g. the quoted e-mail conversations between the author and the state, some assorted hoodlums quoted on crime, the written doubts of Sevo's stories (which aren't exactly fact-checking).

This is Unique. Real Journalism. Some of the descriptions of people, places, deals gone wrong - they're so one-dimensional that somebody who's seen "Blood In, Blood Out" and "Scarface" once could do this.

While the author writes of sitting in cafés, detailing what he's eating while Milan Sevo somehow drips out of the picture, did he ever stop to think that his frame of mind could tint the book? Or couldn't he see the trees for all the awards in the way?

Please, Roberto Saviano, are you there?… (mehr)