The Bookseller of Kabul - Hardcover

Seierstad, Asne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316734500 ISBN 13: 9780316734509

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 2003

Synopsis

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 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.

About this title

Review:

"Written sometimes more like fiction than fact ... this is a remarkable portrait, with deftly woven accounts of weddings and journeys, books and bookselling, relations and squabbles, firmly anchored by pleasing details about food and customs, all set against the backdrop of a derelict city, filthy and crammed but not defeated" Independent ("Remarkable . honestly and intelligently written" Isabel Hilton, Daily Telegraph)

" Fascinating ... a colourful portrait of people struggling to survive in the most brutal circumstances ... bear[s] witness to the power of literature to withstand even the most repressive regime" Michael Arditti, Daily Mail ("An intimate portrait of Afghani people quite unlike any other book available on the country. It is a compelling read" Sunday Times)

"A unique insight into another world as the Norwegian answer to Kate Adie shares the life of a family in Kabul" Daily Mirror ("A compelling picture of a country" Sunday Telegraph)

"...she wrote about this family simply because it interested her. This interest leaps from the pages. Seierstad's great strength lies in bringing all the characters to life with wonderful dialogue ... reads much like a novel ... there are vivid descriptio ('Seierstad's compelling family portrait is the heart of the book. Full of gossipy, jokey, intimate moments, sniffing the dust beneath the carpets, it shines it own fascinated gaze on rites of courtship and strictures of duty, kinship and protocol ... but)

Book Description:

* The international bestseller: 'An intimate portrait of Afghani people quite unlike any other ... a compelling read' Christina Lamb, SUNDAY TIMES

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0316734500
• ISBN 13: 9780316734509
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320