Meeting Date: June 26 2007, 7:00 PM
Book: The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
Book Description:
For more than twenty years, Sultan Khan has defied the authorities, whether communist or Taliban, to supply books to the people of Kabul. He has been arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned, and has watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. Yet he has persisted in his passion for books, shedding light in one of the world's darkest places. This is the intimate portrait of a man of principle and of his family - two wives, five children, and many relatives sharing a small four-room apartment in this war-ravaged city. As they endure the extraordinary trials and tensions of Afghanistan's upheavals, they also still try to live ordinary lives, with work, relaxation, shopping, cooking, marriages, rivalries, and shared joys. Most of all, this is an intimate portrait of family life under Islam. Even after the Taliban's collapse, the women in Khan's family must submit to arranged marriages, polygamous husbands, and crippling limitations on their ability to travel, learn, and communicate with others. Seierstad lived with Khan's family for months, experiencing first-hand Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it. Stepping back from the page, she allows the Khans to speak for themselves, giving us a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and of a country of great cultural riches and extreme contradictions.
-from: amazon.com
About the Author:
Åsne Seiserstad was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the history of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2000 she published With Their Backs to the Wall: Portraits from Serbia. In autumn 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
Åsne Seiserstad has received numerous awards for her journalism. The Bookseller of Kabul is one of the bestselling Norwegian Books of all time, and has been translated into many languages.
-from: www.virago.co.uk
Links
Asne Seierstad: Profile: Virago
Sarah Waters - profile, interview and extracts from Sarah Waters's works.
Asne Seierstad interview.
A Baghdad Journal - Asne Seierstad.
Amazon.com: The Bookseller of Kabul: Books: Asne Seierstad
A Hundred & One Days: An Interview with Asne Seierstad
Asne Seierstad - A biography of Asne Seierstad.
Book reviews of The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad.
