Review of Arizona Dream: A true story of a real life ‘Oceans Eleven’ by Adnan Alisic
Arizona Dream by Adnan Alisic
After witnessing terrible war atrocities, Adnan Alisic escaped from Bosnia and came to Phoenix, Arizona where he became a successful businessman. Entangled in a gambling addiction, he was forced to execute this sensational casino heist. He is currently serving seventeen-and-a-half years in federal prison in Mississippi, and can be reached at Alisic.adnan6@gmail.com or Arizonadreambook.com.
Arizona Dream — A True Story of a Real-life Ocean’s Eleven left me flat. Even though the book’s pace is fast, and there is plenty of action, the poor grammar and ill-fitting adjectives and adverbs threw me off on every page and purged my desire to find out more about the protagonist’s plight, which ultimately led him to a seventeen-year prison sentence for stealing from an armored car.
The basic story is of a Bosnian immigrant (author Alisac) who moves to Glendale, Arizona and starts a used car dealership. Somehow, he loses all his money to a gambling addiction, then plays out his fantasy that the casino somehow bilked him of the money, when in fact he lost it all playing blackjack.
He interweaves his story with unstructured flashbacks to a deprived upbringing in war-torn Bosnia, but even those many references — undoubtedly related in hopes of eliciting sympathy from the reader and hoping he or she will overlook the all-too-opportunistic author’s immature ambition to screw the system in just about any way he can — left me wondering what the point of this book was. And that was even before I looked up the book’s page on Amazon and found out I was reading a “memoir” by a convicted felon.
His twenty-something lifestyle of parties and hangouts with his immigrant friends further alienated me, and I found myself gritting my teeth as he plotted his “revenge” against an Indian casino that do nothing to him except take the money even he confesses he lost through his addictive behavior.
This unlikely tale of immigrant dreams and fast American riches never gained traction for me, but if you’re inclined to share the author’s view that there’s a sucker born ever minute in America, you might really enjoy the book.
To me, it just wasn’t worth the time. I give it a generous three stars.
I received this book in exchange for my honest review.
