PREMISE: In many countries, ‘zero zero’ or double zero flour is the finest, best flour on the market. Among narco-traffickers, then, ‘zero zero zero’ is the nickname for the very purest, highest quality grade of cocaine. From Mexican cartels to Milanese financiers, Guatemalan mercenaries to Ukrainian warlords, Calabrian traffickers to the traders in Wall Street and London who wash the money clean, this is an unforgettable story that goes around the globe and through every level of society to show the extent to which the drug trade affects us all.
Weaving together stories, interviews, wiretaps and his own experience of the criminal underworld, Saviano reveals an international narco-state, which, in the wake of the financial crisis, is now the pillar of our global economy.
I found Roberto Saviano through Mogwai. An Italian journalist taking on organised crime in Italy and the worldwide cocaine trade by way of a Scottish post-rock band. Naturally.
Mogwai, of course, wrote the soundtrack to the TV adaptation of this book, which I watched, loved and then devoured Saviano’s Gomorrah, the book, associated TV series and then this book.
It’s an eye-opening look at how the cocaine trade works and who is involved at each stage of the process before it reaches my dealer.
Just kidding…I wouldn’t touch the stuff but I find the subject fascinating and thanks to ridiculously brave people like Saviano (who has lived under Police protection since 2006!) we get to learn about it and be dumbstruck by every single aspect of cocaine.
Portable Wonderland 