... There she met an elegant grey-haired man who sold books, and talked about literature and history.
With the serendipity that characterises the lives of war correspondents perhaps more than those of any other journalist, she had chanced upon a man with a story of his own to tell, but more ... Read review
Advantages: Captivating picture of another time, another place Disadvantages: -
...Between 1998-2000 she reported on the war in Kossovo for Norwegian television. For six weeks towards the end of 2001 she hitched and trekked around north of Kabul following the Northern Alliance in its fight against the Taliban. When the objective was achieved she followed the Alliance into Kabul. There she met an elegant grey-haired man who sold books, and talked about literature and history.
With the serendipity that characterises ... ...man with a passion for the stories of his country, a man who would welcome her into the heart of his family to live with them for a protracted period of several months. There is no claim made that the family or the tales told are typical of life in Afghanistan in what comes to be called ‘the first spring after the Taliban:
“…several family members spoke English. Unusual? Yes. But then….A bookseller’s family is ... more
Åsne is a war correspondent. Between 1998-2000 she reported on the war in Kossovo for Norwegian television. For six weeks towards the end of 2001 she hitched and trekked around north of Kabul following the Northern Alliance in its fight against the Taliban. When the objective was achieved she followed the Alliance into Kabul. There she met an elegant grey-haired man who sold books, and talked about literature and history.
With the serendipity that characterises the lives of war correspondents perhaps more than those of any other journalist, she had chanced upon a man with a story of his own to tell, but more than that, a man with a passion for the stories of his country, a man who would welcome her into the heart of his family to live with them for a protracted period of several months. There is no claim made that the family or the tales told are typical of life in Afghanistan in what comes to be called ‘the first spring after the Taliban: “…several family members spoke English. Unusual? Yes. But then….A bookseller’s family is unusual in a country where three quarters of the population can neither read nor write”. Yet the tales that emerge have a resonance that suggests they are at the same time not quite so unusual except, maybe, in the detail.
Although the book is written simply as a straightforward record, the author’s responses cannot be completely hidden. As she says in the introduction: “I was guest, but soon felt at home. I was incredibly well treated; the family were generous and open. We shared many good times, but I have rarely been as angry as I was with the Khan family….” in the pages that followed, I understood both sentiments. These are our first insights into the contradiction that is Afghanistan, the contradiction that lies in the heart of the Afghans themselves.
The Family: Sultan Khan, Sharifa (his first wife), Sonya (his second), Bibi Gul (his mother), Mansur, Eqbal and Aimal (his sons) Shakila (Sharifa’s daughter), Latifa (Sonya’s baby daughter), Yunus (his brother) and Bulbula & Leila (his unmarried sisters). Home: a four room flat, with limited and erratic utilities.
I came to respect and resent Sultan Khan in equal measure. His fight for his heritage, his attempts to be liberal versus his implacability. His holding to his religion and his refusal to allow a son’s pilgrimage. His love of books and his reluctance to either educate his children or allow his sisters to educate others.
The tales are stories of the everyday. A wedding. An infidelity. Family tensions. Shopping trips. Business trips. Petty theft. A pilgrimage. Housekeeping. The charm is in the detail, descriptions of food and shoes and other treasures that take on huge significance in a city suffering from years of civil war and dictatorship. Characters are enlivened in dialogue and thought, scenes of tenderness and squabble, anger and regret. The drama is how the history and the culture of Afghanistan affect life at the smallest level...and how extreme responses can be in that context.
As you might expect from a female author, the affects on the women come through most strongly: the wearing (or not wearing) of the burkha. How it feels and smells, what it is for (from both sides, positive and negative). The near slavery of being bound by convention, and respect, to a family that dictates your every move from what and when you eat, to who or if you marry. The sheer hardship of the struggle to keep house in what is still a war-ravaged city. The nature of reprisals if the bounds are overstepped. Yet the young males of the family have little more freedom, they too are in awe of their father. Their yearnings and ambitions in life, in business, in love are as equally bound in convention and respect. They too work long boring days. They too seek illicit pleasures, but are not sure enough of their rebellion.
~ ~ ~
Among all the chances that brought Åsne Seierstad to the family, the chances which gave her the unrivalled access to all sides of the stories are the facts that she is a westerner and female. Being a westerner she was seen as “a journalist” rather than a man or a woman, which enabled her to wander the man’s world ~ yet she is a woman and was accorded the respect (and lack of it) that enabled her to talk with the women. This is a freedom yet denied to those whose histories she allows us to share. It is a freedom that cannot be gifted from the outside world. The chains now are within their own psyche. Years of war and brutality have left concepts of security and insecurity, that may take more than a generation to revise.
As a portrait of one of the last and most romanticised “wild and lawless” places on earth, The Bookseller of Kabul presents a society somewhat on the contrary trying to maintain more laws and honour codes than it probably needs.
~ ~ ~
Paperback edition pub by Virago with a cover price of £6.99. ISBN 1-84408-04-1
Advantages: Gripping read Disadvantages: Ethics behind the book - is it exploitative?
...you will be gripped in the process. It is a story of family-life in Kabul, as told by the award-winning Norwegian journalist, Asne Seierstad.
Immediately following September 11th, Seierstad flew to Afghanistan to report on the war there. A few months later after the fall of the Taliban in Spring 2002, she returned to live with an Afghan family for four months. As Seierstad admits herself, it is not a typical Afghan family. For that, she would have ... ...middle-class family in Kabul – the family of bookseller, Sultan Khan (in real life, his name is Shah Mohammed Rais). For over 20 years Sultan Khan defied the Afghan authorities (be they Communist or Taliban) to sell books. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the Communists. He had to watch illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books on the street. By the end, he resorted to hiding most of his stock (almost 10,000 books) in attics ...
Maia 15.04.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad
Advantages: Well written, colourful stories. Disadvantages: It's authenticity has been questioned.
In the spring of 2002 a Norwegian journalist, who had been reporting for Scandinavian newspapers on the offensive against the Taliban, spent four months living with Sultan Khan, a Kabul bookseller, and his family. The resulting bestseller was released to rave reviews in Britain.
Asne Seierstad explains in the foreword how she met Sultan and went to live with his family. He presented himself to her as a man who has tried to save the art and literature ... ...the communists and again by the Taliban. He has spent years fighting against censorship. Through the Communist, Mujahedeen and Taliban regimes he has managed to hide, buy, collect and sell illegal books. He has been imprisoned. The scene is set for an uplifting book, a story of resistance against oppression, but instead brutality pervades the book. The lives portrayed are not happy ones, as I suppose could only be expected in a country so ravaged ...
noodlebutty 24.04.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad
Advantages: Gripping and informative Disadvantages: None that I could find
This is a book telling the true story of the extended Khan family following the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The bookseller of the title, is the patriarch of the family, Sultan. He is married with children and lives in a small four roomed apartment with limited and extremely erratic facilities, in Kabul with his extended family including his ageing mother and a nephew.
The whole family is as follows:-
Sultan Khan, Sharifa (his first wife), ... ...Leila (his unmarried sisters).
The main focus of the story, as is to be expected from a female writer, is upon the treatment of the Afghan women, including the situation of there now being no need to wear the prescribed Bhurkas (veils covering the entire body and face), and the growing want, and need, for independence. It also discusses the role and importance of faith and religion in the ‘new’ Afghanistan.
The story is told from a third person ...
PurpleHellyBook 21.07.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad
Advantages: Enthralling and Captavating Disadvantages: none
...was disheartend and saddend with the ongoing reports of war and fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and the surrounding area.
However as I started to read the book I was transported to a different place and what seemed a different time.
In spring of 2002 the author spent four months living with the bookseller and his family, written in literary form, the author lets the Khans tell their stories of proposals and marriages, hopes and fears and crime and ... ...head of the family. He is married with children and lives in a small four roomed apartment with limited and extremely erratic facilities, in Kabul with his extended family including his ageing mother and nephew.
The whole family is as follows:-
Sultan Khan, Sharifa (his first wife), Sonya (his second), Bibi Gul (his mother), Mansur, Eqbal and Aimal (his sons) Shakila (Sharifa’s daughter), Latifa (Sonya’s baby daughter), Fazil (his nephew), Yunus ...
felixmoggy 22.11.2004 (23.11.2004)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful Review of The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad
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