The Bookseller of Kabul

I picked up this book called “The Bookseller of Kabul” by Asne Seierstad, in the library a few weeks ago and finished it this week.

I began reading it and was so taken back by the stark reality and honesty of this story. A fire within me was ignited when reading about the way in which the majority of Afgan families live out their every day lives. In a country torn by war, this book focuses more on how their religion and politics dictate and still reign supreme. It’s the women that bear the brunt of the suffering. My heart bleeds for them and countless other women around the world, ones that we hear of, read of, but seldom stop to just think about what their lives are like in comparison to our own.

At times I had to stop myself from reading further, because I got so upset by the truth of these people and their existence. I felt like just shouting at them in the book! I found this review (from Publishers Weekly) of the book that gives a good overall summary and insight:

“After living for three months with the Kabul bookseller Sultan Khan in the spring of 2002, Norwegian journalist Seierstad penned this astounding portrait of a nation recovering from war, undergoing political flux and mired in misogyny and poverty. As a Westerner, she has the privilege of traveling between the worlds of men and women, and though the book is ostensibly a portrait of Khan, its real strength is the intimacy and brutal honesty with which it portrays the lives of Afghani living under fundamentalist Islam. Seierstad also expertly outlines Sultan's fight to preserve whatever he can of the literary life of the capital during its numerous decades of warfare (he stashed some 10,000 books in attics around town). Seierstad, though only 31, is a veteran war reporter and a skilled observer; as she hides behind her burqa, the men in the Sultan's family become so comfortable with her presence that she accompanies one of Sultan's sons on a religious pilgrimage and witnesses another buy sex from a beggar girl-then offer her to his brother. This is only one of many equally shocking stories Seierstad uncovers. In another, an adulteress is suffocated by her three brothers as ordered by their mother. Seierstad's visceral account is equally seductive and repulsive. An international bestseller, it will likely stand as one of the best books of reportage of Afghan life after the fall of the Taliban.”

“Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.” – Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta (founder of Buddism)