Author: Åsne Seierstad
Translator: Ingrid Christopherson
Type: Audiobook
Narrator: Joanna David
Genre: Non-Fiction
Series: No
Copyright: 2005
Publisher: Recorded Books
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Summary: From GoodReads.
In spring 2002, following the fall of the Taliban, Asne Seierstad spent four months living with a bookseller and his family in Kabul.
For more than twenty years Sultan Khan defied the authorities - be they communist or Taliban - to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock - almost ten thousand books - in attics all over Kabul.
But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and his hatred of censorship, he also has strict views on family life and the role of women. As an outsider, Asne Seierstad found herself in a unique position, able to move freely between the private, restricted sphere of the women - including Khan's two wives - and the freer, more public lives of the men.
It is an experience that Seierstad finds both fascinating and frustrating. As she steps back from the page and allows the Khans to speak for themselves, we learn of proposals and marriages, hope and fear, crime and punishment. The result is a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.' to 'This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details - a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today's Afghanistan.'
Feelings:
I enjoyed listening to this audiobook. At the very beginning the author did give a short all names have been changed and I couldn't have known everything but I talked with the people involved and was able to piece together a story of events from interviews and from living with the family. Then when the author was completely removed from the story from then until the epilogue I found it kind of strange. I remember thinking at one point "does she not have any effect on events happening in the house or the shops? She said she was going to be following them around." Yet she is absent from the narrative. That is my biggest complaint about the book.
I don't know enough about life in a place like Kabul to say if the way she portrays the family is or is not accurate so I will not judge that part of the book. Did I feel occasionally that she had an opinion, sure, but I never felt like she was using the other people to get it across. I'm sure the women did feel trapped in the house and I'm sure that Saltan Khan did think that the way he behaved was normal. From my perspective I feel differently. So I wonder how much my views color this book? I'm sure that in no small way the authors views did color how the characters in the book were portrayed but I didn't feel like it was wrong. This is her view on one families life in Afghanistan.
I enjoyed listening to this book and think that it is a very different view of Kabul as the war on terror is happening and Americans are present but for the most part it is removed from the story even though this is taking place right after 9/11. I liked that we get to see a family up close. It is a very different take on Afghanistan and a humanizing one.
I would recommend this book to those that are interested in what life in one family is like in Kabul.
No comments:
Post a Comment