ZeroZeroZero
Look at Cocaine and All You See Is Powder. Look Through Cocaine and You See the World.
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
Considered a sequel (as far as non-fiction books can go) to Gomorrah, Saviano's debut, published 8 years before this, ZeroZeroZero once again puts on display the scheme of organized crime, this time on an international scale; South America, Western Europe, the United States, and North Africa.
Much like Gomorrah, this book is a combination of the author's musings on one hand and facts about the international operations of narcotraffickers and different branches of law enforcement around the globe on the other. And much like Gomorrah to my dismay, whenever Saviano approaches the subjects from his home country, he seems to forget that they are just names, like the names of those from other places, and delves so deep into the details that everything becomes a blurry monolith, extremely difficult to comprehend. When he puts his Italian macro lens aside and picks up a wider lens to capture the larger picture, his writing, the rapid succession of details, becomes comprehensible.
The author tries to present the reader with a whole picture through minor details, brief stories, interviews, memories, snippets of information, and short biographies of those involved. This is mostly a successful attempt, because the lines are drawn clearly, and the shapes soon start to emerge from the vague lines.
