The Bookseller of Kabul

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After living for three months with the Kabul bookseller SultanKhan in the spring of 2002, Norwegian journalist Seierstad pennedthis astounding portrait of a nation recovering from war,undergoing political flux and mired in misogyny and poverty. As aWesterner, she has the privilege of traveling between the worlds ofmen and women, and though the book is ostensibly a portrait ofKhan, its real strength is the intimacy and brutal honesty withwhich it portrays the lives of Afghani living under fundamentalistIslam. Seierstad also expertly outlines Sultan's fight to preservewhatever he can of the literary life of the capital during itsnumerous decades of warfare (he stashed some 10,000 books in atticsaround town). Seierstad, though only 31, is a veteran war reporterand a skilled observer; as she hides behind her burqa, the men inthe Sultan's family become so comfortable with her presence thatshe accompanies one of Sultan's sons on a religious pilgrimage andwitnesses another buy sex from a beggar girl-then offer her to hisbrother. This is only one of many equally shocking storiesSeierstad uncovers. In another, an adulteress is suffocated by herthree brothers as ordered by their mother. Seierstad's visceralaccount is equally seductive and repulsive and resembles the workof Martha Gellhorn. An international bestseller, it will likelystand as one of the best books of reportage of Afghan life afterthe fall of the Taliban.

The Bookseller of Kabul

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