The Bookseller of Kabul
by Åsne Seierstad
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With The Bookseller of Kabul, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad has given readers a first-hand look at Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it. Invited to live with Sultan Khan, a bookseller in Kabul, and his family for months, this account of her experience allows the Khans to speak for themselves, giving us a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and of a country of great cultural riches and extreme contradictions. For more than 20 years, Sultan Khan has defied the show more authorities - whether Communist or Taliban - to supply books to the people of Kabul. He has been arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned, and has watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. Yet he had persisted in his passion for books, shedding light in one of the world's darkest places. This is the intimate portrait of a man of principle and of his family - two wives, five children, and many relatives sharing a small four-room house in this war ravaged city. But more than that, it is a rare look at contemporary life under Islam, where even after the Taliban's collapse, the women must submit to arranged marriages, polygamous husbands, and crippling limitations on their ability to travel, learn and communicate with others. show lessTags
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Sandydog1 Same type of "family" memoir written in literary style.
Member Reviews
To my great regret, The Bookseller of Kabul turned out to be an extremely disappointing read. This was partly due to my own mistaken preconceptions of the book, but also due to author Ã…sne Seierstad's suspect approach to the telling of what was ostensibly a non-fiction account.
Given its title, the parameters of the story and the subject matter, I had expected (quite reasonably, I think) that the book would be about one man – an upstanding, principled and courageous man – and his struggle to bring learning and reading in the largely illiterate, backwards country of Afghanistan, and how this would bring him into conflict with the ruling Taliban, who brought an extremely strict form of Islamic rule to the forsaken country show more which, quite frankly, still beggars belief. I imagined a sort of real-life Fahrenheit 451, and Seierstad does indeed try to paint the 'bookseller', Sultan, as a sort of courageous freethinker. However, we only get the early chapter, 'Burning Books', devoted to Sultan's views on this (apart from some token statements in later chapters that he is a 'liberal' and a 'freethinker') and to the extreme iconoclasm practiced by the Taliban. Even here, Seierstad's commentary is disappointingly sketchy, offering no more insight into the issue than you would be able to find on the relevant Wikipedia page. Googling 'Bamiyan Buddha' would tell you just as much as you would get here.
I fully expect that Seierstad intended to write a whole book on this theme, but – understandably, I guess – her experiences in Kabul compelled her to shift focus to another theme: that of women's rights in the Muslim world. It is this theme which dominates the rest of the book. Now, this is of course an extremely important issue; indeed, some writers (notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would contend that the liberation of women in Islamic cultures is the key to the reformation and redemption of that religion as a creed of peace and tolerance. The problem is that Seierstad manages to take this hot-button topic and make it boring. She offers a sort of chronicle of one family living in Kabul, telling us in minute detail about the lives of these women and the men whom they must obey. None of the women offer a token resistance or rebellion to their lot in life; indeed, none of them seem to have the wit or the imagination to do so. (At one point, one male character makes a mocking joke about another man educating his wife as 'like a bored man teaching his donkey to talk'; though appallingly misogynistic, it unfortunately has the ring of truth here.) Rather, we are given detailed accounts of the women's routines; the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping, and so on, to the point that it becomes a chore to read. Nothing compared to the drab existence of these poor women, of course, but it still does not do the book any favours.
True, some of The Bookseller of Kabul does make the reader's blood boil, such as the arranged marriages in which the women are bought and sold with less dignity than one might a prostitute in the streets of any Western city. Seierstad's anecdotes range from the evil (on page 43, one teenage girl who has brought 'dishonour' on her family by merely meeting a boy is suffocated by her two brothers on their mother's orders), through the sinister ("It's a good sign when the bride is unwilling. That indicates a pure heart." (pg. 60)), to the simply absurd (we learn the Taliban forbade women from wearing shoes with solid heels, believing that the sound of women walking could distract men (pg. 91)). It is because of the importance of this issue that I feel a little guilty about disliking the book, but Seierstad's account doesn't stand out from any of the other books on this theme that are out there. In fact, as I shall discuss in the following paragraphs, her other decisions on writing style and content do much to diminish it in comparison.
Some reviews of the book which I have read commend it as offering an honest, even-handed and non-judgmental account of the lives of this family. Even leaving aside the fact that if there is one issue you are allowed to be judgmental about it is the appalling plight of these women, I did not find the praise of these reviewers to match with my own experience of the book. First of all, Seierstad's presence can be felt in every word of the prose. Rather than offering a fly-on-the-wall document of the family, the writer chooses a sort of 'progressive', 'artistic', 'some-other-buzzword' novelisation. We are given insights into how the characters (for that is what they are) feel about certain things, which Seierstad as a journalist and an outsider could not possibly know. This approach means we are seeing everything through the author's lens; rather than a documentary, the book is a speculation – a dramatization with Seierstad as director and scriptwriter. One does not finish the book with a finer understanding of the people of Afghanistan or the dynamics of a Muslim family; rather, we finish it with an understanding of the author's take on the people of Afghanistan and the dynamics of a Muslim family.
Even more damaging to the integrity of the book, Seierstad's lens is somewhat out of alignment. Since its publication, the book has been subject to court cases (including from the real 'bookseller' himself) and a great deal of criticism about its inaccuracies, its speculations and its fictionalisation of certain events (the horrifying scene on pages 130-1 in which a poor twelve-year-old beggar girl is exploited and raped apparently never happened – Seierstad generated it based on what she thought the characters would have done in such a scenario). It is hard to be lenient on a book when you can't even trust the author. When you don't know if the book is accurate or not, or have sincere lingering doubts about its honesty, you do at times wonder whether it is worth reading it at all.
Seierstad's judgment also seems to be off when she praises Sultan as a freethinker. Lip service is paid to this in the early chapters but it is never fully developed; rather, my conclusion was that Sultan was a businessman as opposed to a book-lover, thinking more in terms of expanding his customer base than bringing enlightenment through the joy of reading to the under-nourished masses. We get a truer understanding of Sultan's freethinking when the topic of Salman Rushdie comes up on page 68 (he should be killed, naturally, for his 'insult'), his compassion when he deals with a poverty-stricken carpenter (who gets three years in prison for stealing some of Sultan's postcards; Seierstad does not tell us what happens to the man's family now that their sole provider of food and money is locked up) and of his progressiveness when it comes to the members of his household, particularly the women (he rules with an iron fist as ruthlessly as any megalomaniac patriarch).
I suppose, however, that for all of The Bookseller of Kabul's myriad faults, it should be commended for, as I mentioned earlier, presenting us with another viewpoint on such an important topic. Its novelistic approach is fundamentally misguided, but in a (presumably) rather unintended way it was this which had the most profound effect on me. You see, Seierstad's fictionalised vignette-like approach to the story of this family often had me confused about which of the events are taking place during the period of Taliban rule and which are taking place after the post-9/11 American-led invasion. The only yardstick I could use (aside from the rare occasions when a specific date was mentioned) was whether the women were wearing burkas (burkas being a Taliban hobby-horse). This confusion made me realise that, burkas aside, Islamic culture in Afghanistan was not fundamentally different pre- and post-9/11. Even when the Taliban weren't around anymore to take things to the extremes by banning music, dancing or women's heels, the fundamentals of the society were the same: Men to be obeyed; women to obey. Men as patriarchs; women as assets to be traded. 'Family.' 'Honour.' 'Respect.'
The problem, it becomes clear, was not just the Taliban, nasty pieces of work though they were. It is the fundamentals of Islamic culture in which these three words of family, honour and respect become meaningless; daughters of the 'family' are traded like baseball cards, are ostracised or suffocated by their brothers if they impinge the family's 'honour' by refusing, and all serving to make that word 'respect' as shallow a word as ever there was. This is not an Islamophobic screed, though Seierstad seems to be able to stomach these insults to human dignity and aspiration than I personally believe I ever could. But one cannot help but feel oneself opposed to a culture and a mindset in which women are lobotomised, who feel 'nothing' because they have been taught that 'feelings are a disgrace' (pg. 259); a culture in which a woman can say to a male suitor with complete sincerity and lack of self-consciousness that "My family will decide whether I like you or not." (pg. 268). In one passage on page 169, we are told how these women have never been alone their entire lives; every moment of their existence is spent in the presence of either female relatives or a male chaperone. And yet, tragically, I would say that these women are probably amongst the most alone people in the entire world. show less
Given its title, the parameters of the story and the subject matter, I had expected (quite reasonably, I think) that the book would be about one man – an upstanding, principled and courageous man – and his struggle to bring learning and reading in the largely illiterate, backwards country of Afghanistan, and how this would bring him into conflict with the ruling Taliban, who brought an extremely strict form of Islamic rule to the forsaken country show more which, quite frankly, still beggars belief. I imagined a sort of real-life Fahrenheit 451, and Seierstad does indeed try to paint the 'bookseller', Sultan, as a sort of courageous freethinker. However, we only get the early chapter, 'Burning Books', devoted to Sultan's views on this (apart from some token statements in later chapters that he is a 'liberal' and a 'freethinker') and to the extreme iconoclasm practiced by the Taliban. Even here, Seierstad's commentary is disappointingly sketchy, offering no more insight into the issue than you would be able to find on the relevant Wikipedia page. Googling 'Bamiyan Buddha' would tell you just as much as you would get here.
I fully expect that Seierstad intended to write a whole book on this theme, but – understandably, I guess – her experiences in Kabul compelled her to shift focus to another theme: that of women's rights in the Muslim world. It is this theme which dominates the rest of the book. Now, this is of course an extremely important issue; indeed, some writers (notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would contend that the liberation of women in Islamic cultures is the key to the reformation and redemption of that religion as a creed of peace and tolerance. The problem is that Seierstad manages to take this hot-button topic and make it boring. She offers a sort of chronicle of one family living in Kabul, telling us in minute detail about the lives of these women and the men whom they must obey. None of the women offer a token resistance or rebellion to their lot in life; indeed, none of them seem to have the wit or the imagination to do so. (At one point, one male character makes a mocking joke about another man educating his wife as 'like a bored man teaching his donkey to talk'; though appallingly misogynistic, it unfortunately has the ring of truth here.) Rather, we are given detailed accounts of the women's routines; the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping, and so on, to the point that it becomes a chore to read. Nothing compared to the drab existence of these poor women, of course, but it still does not do the book any favours.
True, some of The Bookseller of Kabul does make the reader's blood boil, such as the arranged marriages in which the women are bought and sold with less dignity than one might a prostitute in the streets of any Western city. Seierstad's anecdotes range from the evil (on page 43, one teenage girl who has brought 'dishonour' on her family by merely meeting a boy is suffocated by her two brothers on their mother's orders), through the sinister ("It's a good sign when the bride is unwilling. That indicates a pure heart." (pg. 60)), to the simply absurd (we learn the Taliban forbade women from wearing shoes with solid heels, believing that the sound of women walking could distract men (pg. 91)). It is because of the importance of this issue that I feel a little guilty about disliking the book, but Seierstad's account doesn't stand out from any of the other books on this theme that are out there. In fact, as I shall discuss in the following paragraphs, her other decisions on writing style and content do much to diminish it in comparison.
Some reviews of the book which I have read commend it as offering an honest, even-handed and non-judgmental account of the lives of this family. Even leaving aside the fact that if there is one issue you are allowed to be judgmental about it is the appalling plight of these women, I did not find the praise of these reviewers to match with my own experience of the book. First of all, Seierstad's presence can be felt in every word of the prose. Rather than offering a fly-on-the-wall document of the family, the writer chooses a sort of 'progressive', 'artistic', 'some-other-buzzword' novelisation. We are given insights into how the characters (for that is what they are) feel about certain things, which Seierstad as a journalist and an outsider could not possibly know. This approach means we are seeing everything through the author's lens; rather than a documentary, the book is a speculation – a dramatization with Seierstad as director and scriptwriter. One does not finish the book with a finer understanding of the people of Afghanistan or the dynamics of a Muslim family; rather, we finish it with an understanding of the author's take on the people of Afghanistan and the dynamics of a Muslim family.
Even more damaging to the integrity of the book, Seierstad's lens is somewhat out of alignment. Since its publication, the book has been subject to court cases (including from the real 'bookseller' himself) and a great deal of criticism about its inaccuracies, its speculations and its fictionalisation of certain events (the horrifying scene on pages 130-1 in which a poor twelve-year-old beggar girl is exploited and raped apparently never happened – Seierstad generated it based on what she thought the characters would have done in such a scenario). It is hard to be lenient on a book when you can't even trust the author. When you don't know if the book is accurate or not, or have sincere lingering doubts about its honesty, you do at times wonder whether it is worth reading it at all.
Seierstad's judgment also seems to be off when she praises Sultan as a freethinker. Lip service is paid to this in the early chapters but it is never fully developed; rather, my conclusion was that Sultan was a businessman as opposed to a book-lover, thinking more in terms of expanding his customer base than bringing enlightenment through the joy of reading to the under-nourished masses. We get a truer understanding of Sultan's freethinking when the topic of Salman Rushdie comes up on page 68 (he should be killed, naturally, for his 'insult'), his compassion when he deals with a poverty-stricken carpenter (who gets three years in prison for stealing some of Sultan's postcards; Seierstad does not tell us what happens to the man's family now that their sole provider of food and money is locked up) and of his progressiveness when it comes to the members of his household, particularly the women (he rules with an iron fist as ruthlessly as any megalomaniac patriarch).
I suppose, however, that for all of The Bookseller of Kabul's myriad faults, it should be commended for, as I mentioned earlier, presenting us with another viewpoint on such an important topic. Its novelistic approach is fundamentally misguided, but in a (presumably) rather unintended way it was this which had the most profound effect on me. You see, Seierstad's fictionalised vignette-like approach to the story of this family often had me confused about which of the events are taking place during the period of Taliban rule and which are taking place after the post-9/11 American-led invasion. The only yardstick I could use (aside from the rare occasions when a specific date was mentioned) was whether the women were wearing burkas (burkas being a Taliban hobby-horse). This confusion made me realise that, burkas aside, Islamic culture in Afghanistan was not fundamentally different pre- and post-9/11. Even when the Taliban weren't around anymore to take things to the extremes by banning music, dancing or women's heels, the fundamentals of the society were the same: Men to be obeyed; women to obey. Men as patriarchs; women as assets to be traded. 'Family.' 'Honour.' 'Respect.'
The problem, it becomes clear, was not just the Taliban, nasty pieces of work though they were. It is the fundamentals of Islamic culture in which these three words of family, honour and respect become meaningless; daughters of the 'family' are traded like baseball cards, are ostracised or suffocated by their brothers if they impinge the family's 'honour' by refusing, and all serving to make that word 'respect' as shallow a word as ever there was. This is not an Islamophobic screed, though Seierstad seems to be able to stomach these insults to human dignity and aspiration than I personally believe I ever could. But one cannot help but feel oneself opposed to a culture and a mindset in which women are lobotomised, who feel 'nothing' because they have been taught that 'feelings are a disgrace' (pg. 259); a culture in which a woman can say to a male suitor with complete sincerity and lack of self-consciousness that "My family will decide whether I like you or not." (pg. 268). In one passage on page 169, we are told how these women have never been alone their entire lives; every moment of their existence is spent in the presence of either female relatives or a male chaperone. And yet, tragically, I would say that these women are probably amongst the most alone people in the entire world. show less
After September 11, Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad was in Afghanistan, when she met a bookseller. The man, whom she calls Sultan Khan, was a well-educated Afghan who had a book stall in Kabul, where he had defied authorities in the past by saving books that were considered contraband. Seierstad lives with the family, talking to the men and women who speak English, recounting their experiences living in Afghanistan as a war-torn country.
This is narrative nonfiction, in which Seierstad pieces together conversations, thoughts and feelings, as the family explained them to her. Interestingly, I felt strangely distant because I realized that she was describing either what she herself saw while she lived there or what only the show more English-speaking family members could tell her about their thoughts, feelings, actions, and conversations. Sultan Khan is a complicated person: publicly, he is happy when women are part of government, and he broke the law to preserve books important to Afghan history; yet his word is law at home with his family, including his wives, sisters, and children, who all live with him and depend upon him for his livelihood. I found myself getting so mad about the situations of the various women. I also realized in my reading how little I truly know about Afghanistan's history (they were invaded by Soviet Russia?!) and culture. An eye-opening book, and one that will make for a rich book discussion. show less
This is narrative nonfiction, in which Seierstad pieces together conversations, thoughts and feelings, as the family explained them to her. Interestingly, I felt strangely distant because I realized that she was describing either what she herself saw while she lived there or what only the show more English-speaking family members could tell her about their thoughts, feelings, actions, and conversations. Sultan Khan is a complicated person: publicly, he is happy when women are part of government, and he broke the law to preserve books important to Afghan history; yet his word is law at home with his family, including his wives, sisters, and children, who all live with him and depend upon him for his livelihood. I found myself getting so mad about the situations of the various women. I also realized in my reading how little I truly know about Afghanistan's history (they were invaded by Soviet Russia?!) and culture. An eye-opening book, and one that will make for a rich book discussion. show less
I'm going to take the family's side in the argument surrounding this book (see http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/13/bookseller-of-kabul-author-cleared). There's nothing like a white individual with Western European values transposing her perspective onto another country, culture, ethnicity, and religion. I think some who've read the book will feel my statement is apologetic of patriarchal behavior seemingly on steroids. I assure you my feminist bones will not support such an apology. Abuse is abuse, and there is no excuse for it, including religion. Yet, I am not an Afghan, nor religious, nor a person among generations of persons who've known little else but war, subjugation, poverty, torture, and exploitation. Given this show more existence I feel relatively certain a person does what is needed to survive. Religion, culture, and tradition play important roles under such circumstances because they give agency -- that is, they provide a means by which people take action and intervene. I've no right to go into a country and say of cultural, religious, and traditional practice, "You're doing it wrong, so stop it now!" Yes, I realize the irony of my statement since my country's leadership feels it has a right to go anywhere it chooses and make these proclamations, usually with guns locked and loaded. Though, I think there is a valid similarity of audacity here. I think a locked-and-loaded attitude is exactly the attitude Seierstad takes. She sees things from her perspective and calls it the true perspective. The result is that Seierstad's privilege has extended her a platform from which readers can transpose her experiences of interaction and meaning making of a single case study onto the entire complex citizenry of Afghanistan. I fear this broad application was the intention and result of the previous owner of my copy of this book who underlined every single reference to female subjugation and religious practice. I can imagine this former reader smugly enjoying this found "truth" about how backward these poor people are. And, isn't it audacious of me to make such assumptions? show less
he Bookseller of Kabul, a nonfiction work written in literary form, has been out now for more than a decade, and has had its fair share of controversy. Seierstad spent six months living with the Khan family in Kabul, Afghanistan (their name has been changed), not long after the Taliban had been driven out.
Despite the title, the dominant theme of the book is the lack of freedom and autonomy for the women in Sultan Khan's family. The image presented of Sultan Khan is of a money-hungry businessman who makes his young sons work 12-hour days in his bookshops instead of going to school. He is portrayed as an autocratic patriarch of the family that virtually enslaves his 19-year old sister, and marries a 16-year old girl, bringing her into show more the family as a second wife.
The picture painted by Asne Seierstad in The Bookseller of Kabul is not a pretty one. And it doesn't take long for her to be sued by Sultan Khan, whose real name is Shah Muhammad Rais.
As a reader, I can not vouch for the accuracy of the author. I do not know if what she writes is an exaggerated portrayal, dramatized by an author and publicist to appeal to Western audiences...or cold, hard facts about one family in a country that has seen so much devastation and destruction over the last few decades.
The sources for all of the vignettes in The Bookseller of Kabul come primarily from three family members who speak English. Sultan Khan, the patriarch and esteemed bookseller of Kabul; his eldest son Mansur, and Khan's youngest sister, Leila.
Leila. Out of all the family members, my heart hurts the most for Leila. If what I read was accurate, she is a brave woman for speaking so openly and honestly about her treatment in the Khan household. show less
Despite the title, the dominant theme of the book is the lack of freedom and autonomy for the women in Sultan Khan's family. The image presented of Sultan Khan is of a money-hungry businessman who makes his young sons work 12-hour days in his bookshops instead of going to school. He is portrayed as an autocratic patriarch of the family that virtually enslaves his 19-year old sister, and marries a 16-year old girl, bringing her into show more the family as a second wife.
The picture painted by Asne Seierstad in The Bookseller of Kabul is not a pretty one. And it doesn't take long for her to be sued by Sultan Khan, whose real name is Shah Muhammad Rais.
As a reader, I can not vouch for the accuracy of the author. I do not know if what she writes is an exaggerated portrayal, dramatized by an author and publicist to appeal to Western audiences...or cold, hard facts about one family in a country that has seen so much devastation and destruction over the last few decades.
The sources for all of the vignettes in The Bookseller of Kabul come primarily from three family members who speak English. Sultan Khan, the patriarch and esteemed bookseller of Kabul; his eldest son Mansur, and Khan's youngest sister, Leila.
Leila. Out of all the family members, my heart hurts the most for Leila. If what I read was accurate, she is a brave woman for speaking so openly and honestly about her treatment in the Khan household. show less
I read this book till the end, even the epilogue, which was probably the only place where I could garner some empathy, kindness & positivity from the author about the people she was writing about. Throughout the book it was just upsetting to read how she could often assume the worst of the people she was writing about. There is little effort in trying to understand why the people are the way they are, she simply relates us her experience. Context is sorely lacking, which is so important for a country like Afghanistan and the way it has shaped their culture.
Yet what is even more disturbing is that she chose to remove herself from the narration, relating to us the story as if she were just watching from above. Because what happens was show more the assumptions she made, often even about their motivations, feelings and thoughts, are presented as if they were objectively true; as if these were truly the thoughts of the people are not what she assumed them to be.
It disturbs me that people are reading this as an accurate representation of Afghanistan, when this is coming from a woman who had spent only 3 months with a family, who pre-empted the story with her own anger about her experiences and often throughout the book wrote about it quite crudely. And who are those two women on the book cover? Are they female members of the family? A check on the photographer in the credits tells me that it doesn't seem to be. It really pains me to see how Orientalism is still alive and well.
Certain broad claims she makes are never clarified or justified. The women whom she pities as being definitively oppressed aren't even speaking for themselves, they're merely related to us through her. Why doesn't she let them speak? That's one of the first rules of empowerment. This silencing and speaking with definitive authority about what the people truly felt inside was what disturbed me the most. Her well-meaning but condescending pity and assumption of intimate knowledge of these people. show less
Yet what is even more disturbing is that she chose to remove herself from the narration, relating to us the story as if she were just watching from above. Because what happens was show more the assumptions she made, often even about their motivations, feelings and thoughts, are presented as if they were objectively true; as if these were truly the thoughts of the people are not what she assumed them to be.
It disturbs me that people are reading this as an accurate representation of Afghanistan, when this is coming from a woman who had spent only 3 months with a family, who pre-empted the story with her own anger about her experiences and often throughout the book wrote about it quite crudely. And who are those two women on the book cover? Are they female members of the family? A check on the photographer in the credits tells me that it doesn't seem to be. It really pains me to see how Orientalism is still alive and well.
Certain broad claims she makes are never clarified or justified. The women whom she pities as being definitively oppressed aren't even speaking for themselves, they're merely related to us through her. Why doesn't she let them speak? That's one of the first rules of empowerment. This silencing and speaking with definitive authority about what the people truly felt inside was what disturbed me the most. Her well-meaning but condescending pity and assumption of intimate knowledge of these people. show less
Åsne Seierstad is a Scandinavian journalist who was allowed to live for a few months during the spring of 2002 with the Afghan family headed by Sultan Khan, the autocratic bookseller of the title. Despite the hospitality shown by everyone to the female author, the dominant theme of the book is that Afghan women have no autonomy, and that their lives are completely dominated by men and by an extremely harsh and repressive code of Islamic and tribal conduct.
Seierstad had spent six weeks in late 2001 covering the Northern Alliance as, aided by American Special Forces and American air power, it routed the Taliban “military” and drove it from Kabul, the Afghan capital. She then moved to Kabul, where she met “an elegant gray haired show more man,” who happened to be the proprietor of a bookshop she frequented. When she explained she would like to write about his family, he welcomed her into his house of four rooms inhabited by 13 people, where she lived for several months. She was treated like one of the family, except that she was allowed much more freedom of movement, association, and conversation than any Afghan woman.
Through a series of vignettes regarding the various family members, we learn that women are not allowed to converse with any men except close relatives. They are not allowed in public unless accompanied by a male family member. Although no longer required to wear the burka, most women still wear it in public to limit contact with unfamiliar men and to avoid scandal. Conversing with an unrelated male no longer subjects a woman to public stoning to the death (as it did under the Taliban), but it is likely to subject her to repeated physical beating (and occasionally death) at the hands of her own family members (even the other women) because of the shame it brings on the entire family!
Since women are not allowed to associate with men, they usually do not even meet their eventual husbands until the family has arranged a marriage and holds an engagement party on the behalf of the soon to be wed. Families bargain and sell off their daughters somewhat like cattle, and the negotiations are usually conducted without consulting the bride to be. Once wed, a woman cannot even visit her blood relatives without the permission of her husband.
Women are allowed to have jobs, but most families frown on women working. And when an Afghan family “frowns” on something, the family enforces its will with beatings and severe ostracism.
The most primitive beliefs and practices of the Afghans are not shared by all Islamic countries, but the Afghans justify those beliefs and practices because they think Islam requires them. The society is permeated with an Islamic-inspired fear of being shamed. Moreover, shame redounds to an entire family (especially its alpha male) for the actions of any of its members. And yet, hormones still affect behavior, especially of the sex-deprived young who risk severe formal and informal sanctions to communicate with one another.
Things aren’t so great either for men accused of crime. Under the Taliban, the punishment for stealing was amputation of the right hand of the thief. In modern Afghanistan, a man accused of stealing 200 post cards was sentenced to three years in prison by a policeman (apparently without trial) on the hearsay allegations of the bookseller. Moreover, the accused thief was beaten severely by his own family for bringing shame on them.
Discussion: This mistitled book is more about the oppressed women of Afghanistan than about the eponymous bookseller. And what a dreadful existence they lead! As bad as conditions are, the reader is reminded that Sultan Khan is quite wealthy and liberal by Afghan standards and that most of the events described took place after the Taliban had been expelled. Imagine what life was like for Afghan women who lived in poor, more traditional families under the Taliban!
Evaluation: This is a well-written book that gives us important insights into a society far removed from our own. It provides an illuminating look at life in a country governed by religious dictates that are not only very harsh, but are quite a bit more punitive for women than for men.
(JAB) show less
Seierstad had spent six weeks in late 2001 covering the Northern Alliance as, aided by American Special Forces and American air power, it routed the Taliban “military” and drove it from Kabul, the Afghan capital. She then moved to Kabul, where she met “an elegant gray haired show more man,” who happened to be the proprietor of a bookshop she frequented. When she explained she would like to write about his family, he welcomed her into his house of four rooms inhabited by 13 people, where she lived for several months. She was treated like one of the family, except that she was allowed much more freedom of movement, association, and conversation than any Afghan woman.
Through a series of vignettes regarding the various family members, we learn that women are not allowed to converse with any men except close relatives. They are not allowed in public unless accompanied by a male family member. Although no longer required to wear the burka, most women still wear it in public to limit contact with unfamiliar men and to avoid scandal. Conversing with an unrelated male no longer subjects a woman to public stoning to the death (as it did under the Taliban), but it is likely to subject her to repeated physical beating (and occasionally death) at the hands of her own family members (even the other women) because of the shame it brings on the entire family!
Since women are not allowed to associate with men, they usually do not even meet their eventual husbands until the family has arranged a marriage and holds an engagement party on the behalf of the soon to be wed. Families bargain and sell off their daughters somewhat like cattle, and the negotiations are usually conducted without consulting the bride to be. Once wed, a woman cannot even visit her blood relatives without the permission of her husband.
Women are allowed to have jobs, but most families frown on women working. And when an Afghan family “frowns” on something, the family enforces its will with beatings and severe ostracism.
The most primitive beliefs and practices of the Afghans are not shared by all Islamic countries, but the Afghans justify those beliefs and practices because they think Islam requires them. The society is permeated with an Islamic-inspired fear of being shamed. Moreover, shame redounds to an entire family (especially its alpha male) for the actions of any of its members. And yet, hormones still affect behavior, especially of the sex-deprived young who risk severe formal and informal sanctions to communicate with one another.
Things aren’t so great either for men accused of crime. Under the Taliban, the punishment for stealing was amputation of the right hand of the thief. In modern Afghanistan, a man accused of stealing 200 post cards was sentenced to three years in prison by a policeman (apparently without trial) on the hearsay allegations of the bookseller. Moreover, the accused thief was beaten severely by his own family for bringing shame on them.
Discussion: This mistitled book is more about the oppressed women of Afghanistan than about the eponymous bookseller. And what a dreadful existence they lead! As bad as conditions are, the reader is reminded that Sultan Khan is quite wealthy and liberal by Afghan standards and that most of the events described took place after the Taliban had been expelled. Imagine what life was like for Afghan women who lived in poor, more traditional families under the Taliban!
Evaluation: This is a well-written book that gives us important insights into a society far removed from our own. It provides an illuminating look at life in a country governed by religious dictates that are not only very harsh, but are quite a bit more punitive for women than for men.
(JAB) show less
The author was a journalist embedded with the commandos of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban fell and the country became "free". In Kabul she had met an interesting man, Sultan Khan, a collector and seller of books of all kinds, who had persevered in his calling through multiple regimes, several purges and book burnings, and who allowed her to live with his large family to observe their daily life. Removing herself completely from the narrative, Seierstad shares the activities, dreams and frustrations of the Sultan's family---mother, sisters, wives, and sons---as they accustom themselves to the latest reality in a newly liberated city that is still plagued with shortages of everything from rice to show more electricity, and an evolving society where the traditions and restrictions of the Muslim religion conflict with the push toward modernization. This story is full of ironies, and reading it now, in light of the last 20 years of Afghan history, we must view it as a snapshot of a moment in time, rather than a window on the future. show less
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Norwegian journalist Seierstad casts light on the difficult, sometimes dreary, often (still) dangerous life of a bookseller in the Afghan capital, not neglecting the equal but very different tribulations of the women in his family. ... A slice of Afghanistan today, rendered with a talent for fine, sobering prose and strange, unnerving settings that recall Ryszard Kapuscinski.
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Author Information
12 Works 8,356 Members
Asne Seierstad has received numerous awards for her journalism and has reported from such war-torn regions as Chechnya, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. She is fluent in five languages and lives in Norway
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- Canonical title
- The Bookseller of Kabul
- Original title
- Bokhandleren i Kabul
- Alternate titles*
- De boekhandelaar van Kaboel : een familie in Afghanistan
- Original publication date
- 2002
- People/Characters
- Sultan Khan
- Important places
- Kabul, Afghanistan; Afghanistan; Peshawar, Pakistan; Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
- Epigraph
- Migozarad! (It will pass) - Graffito on the walls of a Kabul teahouse
- Dedication
- For my parents
- First words
- One of the first people I met when I arrived in Kabul in November 2001 was Sultan Khan. (Foreword)
When Sultan Khan thought the time had come to find himself a new wife, no one wanted to help him.
A few weeks after I left Kabul, the family split up. (Epilogue) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I have written down what I saw and heard, and have tried to gather my impressions of a Kabul spring, of those who tried to throw winter off, grow and blossom, and others who felt condemned to go on 'eating dust', as Leila would have put it. (Foreword)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)That evening she will sweep it up and throw it out into the backyard.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Another little catastrophe in the Khan family. (Epilogue) - Original language
- Norwegian
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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