Asne Seierstad, a journalist, met bookseller Sultan Khan in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in 2002.She was impressed with a man, who, despite seeing his books burned by the Taliban numerous times still believed in the free exchange of ideas. Khan went to great lengths to hide books in the houses of friends so that he could continue to keep his store open. Seierstad asked Khan's permission to live with his family for several months so that she could write about what she believed was a very progressive thinking man.... a man who she hoped represented a change in the country of Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the truth turned out to be much more complicated. Yes, Khan DID believe in the rights of people to freely express ideas but he was also caught up in the ancient customs of his country concerning women... more specifically, the invisibility of women in Afghan society. Sultan decided to take a very young second wife despite the fact that his first wife was angry and heartbroken and refused to even attend the ceremony.

This book exemplifies the very complicated society due to age old Muslim customs in the Middle East and is very interesting and frustrating to read.I had the feeling that for every step forward these societies take, the deep seated ancient customs force them two steps back. In light of the United States involvement in these middle eastern countries, I feel this book is required reading for anyone who wants to really understand what we are facing.

Another non-fiction from the gothic Afghanistan which will pierce your heart. What makes this book different though, is the profound potrayal of the day-to-day life in an Afghan household post-Taliban era.
A country which is war torn by more than 30 years of war and is finally trying to rebuild itself but is constantly threatened by the dogma of internal dissidents and the ambiguities of its own citizens- who are thrown in between the complex fabric of a phase where they are happy to be free, still decide to cling to the age old traditions.
The story revolves around a bookseller who is actually a liberal in his thoughts, but an authoritarian at his home, and the various male and female members of his family.
The Norwegian author had actually lived among the family in their house, and hence her account of it, comes to be more lively than surreal.

An easy and quick read, but is mentally invigorating enough to linger in your mind for a while.

„Mladé ženy sú v prvom rade tovarom na výmenu či predaj. Manželstvo je zmluva, ktorú uzavrú rodičia alebo rodiny. Dôležité je, aký bude mať manželstvo prínos pre klan – city sa nezohľadňujú. Afganské ženy sa s nespravodlivosťou, ktorá sa na nich páchala, museli zmierovať storočia. Vznikli o tom svedectvá v piesňach a básňach. Tieto piesne však nie sú určené verejnosti, ich ozvena ostáva v horách a v púšti.“

Kniha nórskej spisovateľky nesie síce názov Kníhkupec z Kábulu, ale je hlavne o ženách v Afganistane. Åsne Seierstad opisuje ich trápenie v hrubých burkách, pod ktorými sa ťažko dýcha, ale aj v rodinách, kde sa ešte ťažšie žije.

Afganky sa vydávajú ako deti za mužov, ktorí sú od nich bežne starší o 20 rokov. Keď sa im neskôr zunujú, musia sa naučiť akceptovať ďalšie ich ženy, ktoré sú často vo veku ich spoločných detí.

Kniha Kníhkupec z Kábulu nie je taká výborná ako Dve sestry alebo Jeden z nás, ale je výnimočným svedectvom o afganskej spoločnosti, v ktorej ženy nie sú zvyknuté za niečo bojovať, ale naopak, celý život sa vzdávajú.

Åsne Seierstad har en magisk evne til å få selv de mest dagligdagse betraktninger av ting til å høres nedlatende ut

خلال قراءتي وجدت أنَي أكتشف عادات وتقاليد أفغانستان وتفاصيل عائلة سلطان"بائع الكتب" بطريقة جذبتني وأنا متشوقة لقراءة المزيد.
أطلعت على الكثير حول حياة النساء في كابول وكيف أنهن يخضعن تحت سلطة الرجال لدرجة أنهن يفقدن غالبًا أبسط حقوقهن, كالموافقة على زوج تقدم أو استكمال تعليمها وأخيرًا رغبتها في الوظيفة.
الحياة في كابول قاسية جدًا على النساء, تهضم حقوقهن بشكل مريع, في كثير من المواضع حزنت على آمالهن وهي تتحطم أمامهن لسبب لا يقنع أحد.
قسوة سلطان على أبنائه وأخوانه وفرضه لعملهم معه في فروع مكتباته مؤلم.


,,

الكاتبة أخذتني لأفغانستان وبالتحديد لكابول لأعيش مع أفراد عائلة سلطان, مرورًا بتفاصيل حياتهم البسيطة واليومية وانتهاءًا بطقوس الأعراس والخطبة.

,,
لم تخطر على بالي هذه النهاية لعائلة سلطان .. توقعت "آنسي" حدوث كارثة لهم إذ كان آخر ما كتبت:
"ستحدث كارثة أخرى في عائلة آل خان"


,,
أجمل مما توقعت,ستكون هذه الرواية ضمن قائمة الاقتراحات للصديقات :)

"My tale from Kabul is the tale of a most unusual Afghan family. A bookseller's family is unusual in a country where three quarters of the population can neither read nor write."

After Taliban's rule in the country, Afghanistan tried to set up their country back to how a democracy should be. Tried to rule out all the old laws made by Taliban. The story is both a nation which was determined and believed in rising up after loosing its freedom to gunmen.

n  "This is how first-year schoolchildren learn the alphabet: 'J is for Jihad, our aim in life, I is for Israel, our enemy, K is for Kalashnikov, we will overcome...."n

Sultan Khan is a bookseller in Afghanistan. He has many book stores and he believes that everyone should have access to books but never sent his kids to school. He wants women to be independent but doesn't let his sister work and earn. This book shows the lives of different members in his family and how they are dependent on him. His decision is something no one would ever oppose and will obey even when they see that he is wrong because he is the one who wants people to be free but wants he family be dependent on him.

n  " I laugh with my mouth, not my heart."n

My favorite character was Leila as she was only one who actually want to be truly free and out of the cage. The book closely shows the culture and tradition of the country and how it slowly changed for women and children after years of trying. I really loved the epilogue where the author questions about other families' freedom and gives something to ponder over.

Really love this book. Four stars, overall :D

my issues with this book are basically ideological/political -- in spite of an introduction justifying her decision to erase herself from the story, the author also says that she spent a significant period of her time in the household arguing with its male members (presumably about gender politics and the subordinate status of the family's women). i think including these disagreements would have made for a far stronger and more compelling story (not to mention more honest) -- as it is, this is just another piece of quasi-anthropological boo-hoo over the oppression of afghan women from an admitted cultural and linguistic outsider. hey, how about letting said women speak for themselves for once?

The Bookseller of Kabul is a book written by a norwegian journalist and it talks about an afghan family. Not a conventional afghan family though since this family had some money and most families are really poor and barely got something to eat. Besides that, this is a very typical afghan family where men work and women can't, men are in charge of the whole family and women can't even leave their houses without a boy or a man by their side, men can choose a woman and ask her family to marry her (by paying her family) and women don't even have a say in the marriage, it's her family that accepts it or not. And don't get me started with all the war that's going on there.
There's so many differences between my culture and afghan culture and most of them aren't so great for women. It is indeed very interesting to read this book and learn a bit more about other cultures, I think it's really important for everyone to know that there are countries with realities completely different than the ones we are familiar with. I really recommend it!

Valerie - I found a used copy of this book for your Christmas present (since I raved about it to you) so don't go buying it! :-)

I wasn't going to write a review of this book at all until I read some of the other reviews posted here and became horrified at their castigation of Ms. Seierstad.

A rebuttal:

I liked this book BECAUSE it doesn't read like investigative journalism. Seirstad never once pretends that she's being unbiased and doesn't apologize for the obvious slant. Frankly, her slant is what I believe mine would be, as I can't deal with overbearing ANYBODY deciding what's best for me or telling me how I must live.

What impressed me the most was her willingness as a naive Western woman to go off by herself and live in an Afghan family, which is something I could never do. Living in a family of religious extremists (of any stripe) is not the same as living as an exchange student. Her experience doing so is her experience - sorry it wasn't pretty. The fact is, she lived in Afghanistan and managed not to get killed, raped, sold, or go stark raving mad. She is living proof that Western women can survive in Afghanistan.

As for her book "feeling hopeless" - perhaps that's because she didn't see any hope. Thinking that world peace is possible (it's not) and that every bad situation will eventually work out (they don't all) to make butterflies and rainbows is a serious failing of American "investigative" journalism. Folks who think and write that way should take a lesson from George Orwell and Upton Sinclair. If you want a hope-filled answer then create one, but don't despise the woman for pointing out that a bad situation is a bad situation.

Oh, and have you read "Not Without My Daughter"?

*Hasil Bookswap IRF 2016*
----------------------------
** Books 83 - 2017 **

This books to accomplish Tsundoku Books Challange 2017

2 of 5 stars!

This books is pretty boring and unstable character plot. At first i though i will read about Sultan as Bookseller in Kabul. However it isn't! so many another character that makes a main character (sultan) doesn't interesting

The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, translated by Ingrid Christopherson, recounts the four months Seierstad lived with a bookseller and his family in Kabul in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban.

Seierstad is a Norwegian journalist who reported on Afghanistan. In the Forward to the book, she describes her meeting with Sultan Khan, the bookseller, a man passionate about art and literature. He discloses the measures he took to safeguard books from those who sought to destroy them. Seierstad is so taken by him that she asks to be a guest in his home to write a book about his family. He agrees. And so Seierstad settles in for four months in Sultan’s home with his mother, his two wives, and his children.

As a guest in the Sultan family household, Seierstad observes the life of a middle-class Afghan family. Afghanistan’s gender segregation and gendered codes of behavior did not apply to her as a Westerner. Garnering a unique perspective, she is privy to the cloistered lives of Afghan women and attends their women only gatherings while also being able to circulate freely among men.

Seierstad delivers a fascinating glimpse into the daily routines of Afghan women. The chapter Billowing, Fluttering, Winding describes the experience of women in their burkas as they weave through the marketplace, purchasing goods. And the chapter The Smell of Dust vividly describes the relaxed atmosphere in the women-only hammam where women of all ages, shapes, and sizes scrub away Afghanistan’s dirt and dust from one another’s naked bodies. Mostly, though, women’s lives are consumed with the daily grind of fetching water, cooking, cleaning, sweeping, doing laundry, mending clothes, and catering to the needs of male relatives.

Poverty, starvation, bribery, and cruelty are woven into the fabric of life. People resort to tragic and desperate measures to provide food for their starving families. Beggars with broken limbs are ubiquitous. The children go to school in tattered, hand-me-down clothes. Severe beatings are meted out by authority figures, including the male heads of families. And women have exclusive responsibility as standard bearers for family morality. Burdened with maintaining family honor, they suffer brutal repercussions should there be even a hint the honor has been breached. Meanwhile, males are allowed free rein.

Evidence of Afghanistan’s patriarchal structure is on full display. As the male head of the family, Sultan Khan requires and receives unequivocal obedience from family members, including sons. He controls all aspects of their lives and decisions. Women, restricted in movement and opportunity, are treated as commodities to be exploited, bartered, and exchanged.

Seierstad paints a compelling portrait of life in an Afghan family. She aims to erase herself from the picture by reporting on what she sees and hears. But her objectivity occasionally lapses. Instead of reporting, she mediates and interprets. This begs the question of authenticity. How much of what she infers is authentic, and how much is due to her Western lens projecting itself on the situation? Why did she presume to speak for Afghan women? Why not provide them with a platform to speak for themselves?

As an outsider looking in, Seierstad’s perspective diminishes the complex social, economic, and cultural context of a situation. At times her approach is superficial, condescending, patronizing, and judgmental. It occasionally smacks of a critique from a position of privilege. This is unfortunate since it detracts from what would otherwise have been a compelling book.

Recommended with reservations.
My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

I enjoyed reading about the overbearing Sultan and his family, especially Leila. Well researched but overall quite depressing.