Brilliant! Just brilliant. 10/10

I think I learned more from this one book than from any news story or other examination of Afghanistan.
You think, after reading the forward and the beginning of the book, that the bookseller will be a progressive man, but his love for his country's history and its literary heritage is his only redeeming quality and yet the very reason he is such a bastard toward his family. Everything comes second to his passion.
In the wake of the Taliban's withdrawal we see them slowly try to regain their freedoms, but after years of outside oppression, the feeling has slowly sunk inward. Sultan's sister is too repressed to speak up in her own defense. His sons do not speak up against their father's wishes which prevent them from having a decent childhood as they slave away in his shops. And his own wife, once a respected professor, must bow to the will of her firstborn who says he does not want to work, even though it is her only desire.
There are glimmers of hope along the way as fate does give the women, who become the true stars of this book a chance. And there are some wiser people amongst the Khan family who have figured out what the country truly needs and that peace is dependent upon throwing off the desire for power that has caused so much war in the country.
Ironically, at one point in the book, a hotel guard in the worst territory in Afghanistan, observing one of Khan's family members helping an American journalist operate a satellite phone, the likes of which the hotel guard has never seen, says "Do you know what our problem is? We know everything about our weapons but we know nothing about how to use a telephone."
Lack of communication seems to be the greatest obstacle in the book and the one that holds the country back. Hopefully that will soon change. But in the meantime, if you really want to get a glimpse into true Afghan life, buy this book.

I was slightly confused about this book as when I read the blurb I thought the book was going to be about the bookseller himself and his book shop and about how he defied the authorities to supply books to the people of Kabul but this book sways away from the blurb and concentrates more on Sultan Khan's family.

I am not sure I like the way the story reads, In spring 2002 award winning journalist Asne Seiratad spent four months living with the bookseller and his family but while the story is told by Seierstad about the Khan family she does not appear in the book and I found this off putting as sometimes I felt I was reading a novel as I can’t believe that the characters especially the Afghan men would discuss or trust a western female journalist. Throughout the book I was waiting for something to happen or for conclusions to individual stories and I know this was my expectations so therefore perhaps this is the reason that I found the book lacking.

I did find the historical content of the book really interesting and felt such sadness for some of the characters especially the women who are treated so badly and have no control over their futures, I found the power fathers, husbands, brothers and sons have over their wives mothers, sisters and daughters so disturbing that I found it difficult reading as I wanted these women to triumph over these self obsessed men but that I am afraid this would not be true in the society they live in.

This is an interesting book and I think would make an excellent book club read as there is plenty to discuss here.

I was irritated early on by the way this book was written. I think it encompasses all my other grips about the book.

Basically the situation is like this: a woman journalist is in Kabul after 9/11. She meets this bookseller, lives with his family a few months with only 3 people in the family speaking English and then she writes a book about them.

First of all, having lived abroad and lived abroad with families, you can't know a family the way this author pretends to in that time. We don't even know how she interacted with the family because she writes herself out of the book entirely. She somehow thinks that she hasn't effected the family's life and that she can just describe them as if there is not some strange white woman sitting on the floor taking notes as they live their lives.

The book is written with such heavy condescension that I wanted to throw up. The moral I took away from the book is that life in Afghanistan sucks, especially if you are a woman, and it's all due to their stupid culture. Warning, this is not what I think, this is what I think the author was telling me to think.

The author says in the preface that she was inspired by this family. But from how she wrote the book it seems she was disgusted. I don't understand how she can write that way without even writing herself in, therefore allowing the follies of inter cultural miscommunication and misunderstanding play a part.

I think that this book was what I was looking for when I read Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. This seems to be more behind the veil than that one.

I can understand how people could have problems with Seierstad's style, and she is being sued by the family in the book. Yet, the book is compelling and does make you think. I also feel that in some ways, perhaps without knowing that she is doing, Seierstad is making remarks upon families in general. True the west is more advanced, but there are still families that have gender inequality. So not only one family and one society, but gender in general.

This is a very detailed picture of life in contemporary Afghanistan. With the journalist's eye for detail and objectivity, Åsne Seierstad presents the day-to-day life of a family in Kabul. Although the subtitle reads "a family drama", I cannot escape the horrible feeling that it is much more than that. It is the drama of the people of Afghanistan. Nearly 20 years after if it was first published, I have an equally horrible feeling that nothing has changed. It is not a "feel-good" story.

Shortly after 9/11 the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad spent few months in Kabul living with the bookseller Sultan Khan and his family. The result of her experience in Khan’s house is a matchless portrait not only of this particular family but of the country as well. “The bookseller of Kabul” (2002) offers an in-depth look in the life of people who experienced and survived different occupations of the country. In this book, we learn as well about food and customs, feelings, hope and fear and proposals and marriages.
The interesting about her report is that she lets the Khans tell their stories from their own point of view but, even doing so, she is able to highlight the effect of suppression of freedom which was crushed first by the Communists, then by Mujahedeen and lastly by the Taliban. In this context, Seierstad emphasizes the extreme subjugation of the women, who as part of a traditional and tribal society are not allowed to choice and decide nothing on their own even when they belong to a literate household like in the case of the Khans.

This work doesn’t aim to be a scientific one but a journalistic report. Despite of this, I had wish to have an appendix with a map, some historical references and perhaps a bibliography. That said, it is an excellent statement, full of information, well written (at least the translation into English is good) in a nice readable style.

Překvapivě zajímavé, poučné, čtivé, a tak vůbec.
Hodně mi to sedlo, a zároveň to má hodně, co předat.
Tleskám.
4,5/5* za pár drobných výhrad

Asne Seirstadt writes an honest and candid account of her four months of life with an Afghan family, following the fall of the Taliban and the end of the reign of terror they subjected the Afghan people to.

She spent these months with the family of Sultan Khan who- for twenty years-defied the tyranny of the Communists and then the Taliban by selling books on the black market because the tyrants did not allow books except those which subscribed to their narrow minded and sick ideas.

Afghanistan was a great, progressive and vibrant country during the reign of King Zahir Shah who was overthrown by Mohammed Daoud Khan in 1973 after which followed 5 years of instability and then the sheer hell of Communist repression followed shortly thereafter by the Taliban's reign of terror.

During the 70s already under-dressed women risked being shot in the legs or having acid sprayed in their faces by the fundamentalists.
After the civil war broke out more and more women had to cover up. After the Taliban seized power all female faces disappeared from the streets of Kabul.

My heart really hurts for these women and girls who suffered so under the Islamists and had to be hidden away and obey through fear.
And I point an accusing finger at all those leftists who claim to believe in feminism but defend excesses Should women in these countries got less rights than what you people take for granted?

Even after the Taliban were overthrown women and girls feared going out alone or dressing as they pleased, because of the residue of terror that the Taliban had left behind.

During the Taliban era one of the most hated buildings in Kabul was the "Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Extermination of Sin". Here women who had walked unescorted by a male relative, or who wore makeup under their burkas, and men who cut their beards, languished under torture and many died.
Before that these had once bee the headquarters of the equally brutal Soviets.
No wonder Leftists and Islamo-Fascists love each other so much. They both have the mania for cruelty and destruction and the death impulse.

Asne Seirstadt witnessed the destruction and death left behind by the Taliban.
The Taliban engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Tajiks and other minorities in northern Afghanistan, raising entire villages to the ground and poisoning water wells and blowing water pipes and dams (vital for survival in these dry plains) before they withdrew.

Seirstadt masterfully covers the sights, sounds and smells of Afghanistan from the cramped life in people's houses where extended families lived together to the bazaars and the 'hamman', the massive communal bath, where thousands of women cleaned themselves and their children on certain days of the week.

Seirstadt captures much of Afghanistan's history and life and culture in these pages.
It is an excellent book for those who want to learn about this country.

"In Afghanistan a woman’s longing for love is taboo. It is forbidden by the tribes’ notion of honor and by the mullahs. Young people have no right to meet, to love, or to choose. Love has little to do with romance; on the contrary, love can be interpreted as committing a serious crime, punishable by death." - Asne Seirstad, The Bookseller of Kabul

Enter the world of the Norwegian journalist, Åsne Seierstad, who covers the aftermath of the Taliban on society in Afghanistan, and you get what you could expect, but still hope you're wrong: a 'pseudo-novelistic' attempt at exposing the life of a country in turmoil / vicious power struggles / chaos.

Coming from a liberal Norwegian society, and being a young journalist, it is expected that the book will be written from a pessimistic, typical journalistic point of view. In fact, I struggled to get into this 'novel' - for nothing in the book presented any characteristics expected of a novel. There was no story line at all to begin with. No plot, no highs and lows, no lyrical prose, no good or bad, no character building - NOTHING. But it was a best seller. Ya well no fine! It was obviously a best seller for reasons beyond my understanding, but as a novel, or well-written one? - nope, sorry. The question remains though: WHY was it promoted and sold as a novel?

It is an expanded set of articles(dare it be called essays?) which became long enough to fill up a book. It wasn't a story. It was a bundle of interviews with all the characters blanketed by a liberal, inexperienced viewpoint from observing filth, poverty, oppression, cruelty, and whatever adjectives or synonyms for it could be found in a journalist's vocabulary.

Neither the male, nor the female interviewees were good people, according to the interpretation of their family life by the author. Bottom line: the journalist was disgusted with the whole set-up and pushed it down my throat with my consent. After all, I wanted to finish the book, right!? In retrospect I am more annoyed with myself for wasting valuable time and energy in allowing it to happen!

Compared to "A Thousand Splendid Suns" written by Khaled Hosseini, this was a memoir, an optimistic attempt by a writer to cross the bridge between being an investigative journalist to novelist and just not succeeding very well. It is not a type of biography either, and not even remotely on par with a real novelist such as Hosseini, who wrote from within his own community to start off with.

But okay, so it wasn't a novel, so let me at least credit the author for her effort: It is an in-depth look at the typical Afghan family experiencing and surviving different occupations of their country. The fact that she stayed three months with Sultan, the book seller, and his extended family, allowed her insight into their lives that is not showered upon many westerners. Although she is not present in the book, the situation is presented from her viewpoint. It is splashed all over the book. Her observations are detailed.

The book highlights the effect of suppression on human lives. In this case, freedom of choice for the men, mostly,was taken away first by the Communists, then Mujahedeen and lastly the Taliban. Women never had any freedom neither choice anyway. The impact on the people is enormous as far as restructuring their lives is concerned. And then 9/11 happened and the Americans came. But if I really want to know what is happening now, I will have to consult the internet and the Al Jazeera news channel. It will be an extension of this book. An investigative journalistic report.

I did endure until the last full stop. So you wonder how the book ends? Well, what do you expect?!

It is always a matter of choice if you want to find out. Expectations differ from person to person, after all. I will respect your point of view no matter what. I apologize for pushing my annoyance down your throat in case you have opted to read to this point ;-)

“Keď sa Bibí Gúl narodil syn, jej postavenie v manželovej rodine sa výrazne zlepšilo. Hodnota nevesty spočívala v panenskej blane, hodnota manželky v počte synov, ktorých porodila.
Keďže bol najstarší syn, vždy sa mu dostalo toho najlepšieho, hoci rodina bola chudobná. Z peňazí, ktoré utŕžili za vydaj Ferózy, mu zaplatili školskú dochádzku.”

Je jedno, kto bol práve pri moci, v Afganistane sa ženy nemali bohvieako ani keď tam neterorizoval krajinu Taliban. Zvyky, tradície a presvedčenia sú tam hlboko zakorenené a ak aj mala dcéra šťastie a dostala sa na školu, nie vždy jej potom vybratý manžel dovolil pracovať. Hoci sa v názve knihy spomína konkrétny muž, táto kniha je, mám taký pocit, najmä o ženách. Ich osudoch, ale aj vnútornom živote ukrytým za ľahostajným výrazom tváre, poslušnosťou, pod burkou.

Nemožno sa tomu čudovať - autorka je žena. Nórska novinárka Åsne Seierstad strávila štyri mesiace v rodine kníhkupca, ktorý síce miluje literatúru, ale podľa všetkého mu ani všetky prečítané knihy a vzdelanie isté potrebné obzory až tak neotvorili. Empatiu a iný ako tradičný pohľad na ženy by ste uňho hľadali márne.

Počas čítania sa mi mozog zastavoval prakticky neustále a premýšľala som, ktoré momenty dostali najviac Åsne, čo toho videla určite viac ako ja a bola teda aj nepomerne otrlejšia. A práve tento aspekt mi v knihe veľmi chýbal. Tá konfrontácia Európanky, ktorá mala možnosti a dostala sa do Afganistanu ako nebojácna novinárka s realitou tamojších žien. Príbeh Sultána Chána a jeho rodiny totiž vyrozprávala bez toho, aby v ňom vystupovala. Sama v úvode uvádza, že niektoré situácie zažila osobne, iné mala sprostredkované cez rozhovory. Nakoľko ale ide neraz do veľmi osobných pocitov utlačených žien, zaujímalo ma - a neustále som nad tým musela premýšľať - koľko z toho dotvorila predsa len jej predstavivosť alebo či si s nimi naozaj vytvorila taký vzťah, že sa jej zdôverili. Toto je to, o čom by som čítala najradšej - ako pomaly prenikala do rodiny, mentality jej členov, ako rástla v ženách dôvera k nej a pocit spolupratričnosti, ako Asne vnímala a prijímala ich príbehy, ale aj to, čoho bola svedkom.
To reportážne, po čom som prahla, som teda celkom nedostala. Napriek tomu bol Kníhkupec z Kábulu silným čítaním, šokujúcim, smutným, zraňujúcim, ak som si predstavila takýto život. Myslela som si, že je to zlé. V skutočnosti je to podľa všetkého stokrát horšie.

"Taliban síce vymizol z krajiny, ale nie z Leilinej hlavy. Ani z hláv Bibí Gúl, Šarífy a Sonje. Ženy v Mikrorajóne sa radovali, že éra Talibanu sa skončila, mohli si púšťať hudbu, tancovať, maľovať si nechty na nohách - keď ich nikto nevidel a keď sa mohli skrývať pod burkou, ktorá ich chránila. Leila bola pravým dieťaťom občianskej vojny, nadvlády mullov a Talibanu. Dieťa strachu. Vnútri plakala."