Seierstad: The Bookseller of Kabul
December 23rd, 2008 by editor
Seierstad: The Bookseller of Kabul
In the spring of 2002, journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to live with a family for several months. Here she reveals her experiences, telling the story of Sultan Khan - who defied the authorities for 20 years to supply books to the people of Kabul - and his family.
A well written and extremely interesting book which opened my eyes to what a dreadful existence women have in Afghanistan. Full of really interesting characters it is ultimately a depressing account of life under the Taliban. If you are interested in this subject I can highly recommend Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner - fabulous reads!
Just finished this book, it is a brilliant, detailed account of life in Afghanistan just after the Taliban were ousted. Not a novel, or even a story, just a slice of the lives of the members of one real, middle-class family. I laughed, I cried, sometimes I stopped reading because I was so shocked, and I still can’t get the characters out of my head.
The author takes particular interest in the women of the family, and makes no attempt to hide her anger at the way women are treated my Afghan society in general, and men in particular. Although the family is very liberal and modern by Afghan standards, it is shockingly misogonistic by western stadards.
The bookseller whose family was depicted probably expected to be shown as a great hearo and liberal, which in same ways he is, but he hated to finished book so much that he travelled to Norway to try and have it banned, and to sue for defamation. Some of his family also claimed political asylum in Norway, claiming that the revelations in the book endangered their lives.