The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad
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The Taliban made headlines around the world in March 2001 when it dynamited the gigantic stone Buddhas of Bamiyan, evidence of Afghanistan’s pre-fundamentalist past. In The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad recounts echoes of that famous destruction in the systematic ransacking of Afghan bookshops by the Taliban’s morality police. Books with pictures were the raiders’ main target: the regime regarded images of living beings as heretical, and since few of the enforcers were literate, they could not readily judge texts on content.
Seierstad, a Norwegian war correspondent, reported from Afghanistan immediately following the fall of the Taliban less than two years ago. During her time there, she befriended a fascinating man, the owner of several bookshops in the capital city and a fervent advocate of a profitable blend of capitalism and intellectual freedom. Through decades of war and upheaval, he persisted in selling banned books, contraband images, political magazines, and his beloved volumes of Persian poetry. Captivated by his story, Seierstad requested permission to write about his life and was welcomed into his household.
The resulting book allows an unusual view of one atypical Afghan family: highly literate, unusually fluent in English, and quite prosperous in a nation that lacks a middle class. Each chapter peers after a given family member, the successful patriarch; the insecure older first wife or the teenaged second wife; the rebellious eldest son, who seeks freedom in religion and reckless past-times; or the youngest sister, cast in a Cinderella role from which she can’t escape. Their lives offer intriguing snapshots of contemporary, post-Taliban Afghanistan. The changing political winds shift their business, their modes of dress, and their hopes for the future of their country.
At its heart, Seierstad’s fascinating journalism beats with the blood of women’s experiences in a heavily male-dominated society that has just begun rediscovering its more liberal mid-twentieth century character. Polygamy, bride prices, arranged marriages, and veil-shrouded figures spill out of a world that appears brutally unequal to Western eyes. The book is a timely entrant into the global conversation on the seeds of terrorism and the varied lives of the peoples of the Middle East.
The Bookseller of Kabul has made Seierstad the best-selling author in Scandavia and is newly released in English.
Review by Mark Bradshaw, January 2, 2004
You can read reviews of two recent memoirs of Iranian women here on the Watermark Web site:Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0803-004.html
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0503-003.html
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