Nemesis. The Battle For Brazil: One Man and the Battle for Rio - Tapa blanda

"Breaking Bad meets City of God" (Roberto Saviano)

"fascinating dive into Brazil’s terrifying underworld, where the stakes are all or nothing...Nemesis reads like a fast-paced thriller" (James Hider The Times)

"A fast-paced crime story that paints a vivid picture of life in the sprawling favelas" (Joe Leahy Financial Times)

"A thrillingly vivid picture of another Rio... [Nemesis] confirms Glenny’s status as one of the most daring and original true-crime writers of today... A rich and riveting book" (Francis Wheen Mail on Sunday)

"Glenny doesn’t just write books; he lives them" (John Kampfner Guardian)

"gripping narrative of cocaine and slaughter" (Andreas Campomar Spectator)

"A magnificent work of reportage by turns raw and courageous" (Ian Thomson Evening Standard)

"A dynastic 50-year Shakespearean sweep of organised crime that manages to be both intimate and alarming" (John Kampfner Observer)

"Misha Glenny, an award-wining investigative journalist and expert on organised crime, has turned his attention to the drugs, violence and poverty that thrive in Rocinha, Rio’s most infamous favela" (Andreas Campomar Spectator)

"a fascinating investigation into the mechanics of organised crime, its political and psychological foundations and its ethnographic conditions in Rio’s favelas." (Toby Lichtig, four stars Sunday Telegraph)

‘Breaking Bad’ meets ‘City of God’ in this gripping account of an ordinary man who became Brazil’s most wanted criminal

His name was Antonio, but they would call him Nem. From the infamous favela of Rocinha in Rio, he was a hardworking young father forced to make a decision that would turn his world upside down.

Nemesis is the story of an ordinary man who became the king of the largest slum in Rio, the head of a drug cartel and perhaps Brazil’s most wanted criminal. A man who tried to bring welfare and justice to a playground of gang culture and destitution, while everyone around him drew guns and partied. It’s a captivating tale of gold-hunters and evangelical pastors, bent police and rich-kid addicts, quixotic politicians and drug lords with maths degrees.

Spanning rainforests and high-security prisons, filthy slums and glittering shopping malls, this is also the story of how change came to Brazil. Of a country’s journey into the global spotlight, and the battle for the beautiful but damned city of Rio, as it struggles to break free from a tangled web of corruption, violence, drugs and poverty. With Nem at its centre, locked in a fight for his country’s future.

As read on Radio 4 Book of the Week