The Bookseller of Kabul
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, History, Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, History, Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction
Book Type: Hardcover
R. S. reviewed on
Helpful Score: 2
If you are really interested in other cultures and how it would be to live in entirely different circumstances you might look for "The Bookseller of Kabul". It's not fiction. It's the story of an Afghanistani family told by Norwegian woman writer names Asne Seierstad. Because Seierstad was European and blond and a newspaper correspondant the family head, who was a bit of an outlaw himself, thought of her as neither male nor female but a different species of fish altogether. As such, he invited her to live in his family where she was free to move within the intimate worlds of the men and the women of the household and the city of Kabul.
Seirstad walked around Kabul, sometimes in her Western journalistic garb and sometimes in a burka gathering details you won't get access to anywhere else. Her story reads like a novel once you get into it and has at least as much drama. Her writing is excellent and her access to information that we have practically no source for incredible and even mind-blowing. If you've been paying any attention, you will want to pull out your hair at the conclusion.
You may find, like me, that it's a way of life that is perplexing and maddening. But you'll get an unparalled peek at what a woman living in that kind of Islamic society (there are all kinds after all just like there are a vary of Western ways of life) deals with on a day to day basis and in trying to shape her own destiny.
Seirstad walked around Kabul, sometimes in her Western journalistic garb and sometimes in a burka gathering details you won't get access to anywhere else. Her story reads like a novel once you get into it and has at least as much drama. Her writing is excellent and her access to information that we have practically no source for incredible and even mind-blowing. If you've been paying any attention, you will want to pull out your hair at the conclusion.
You may find, like me, that it's a way of life that is perplexing and maddening. But you'll get an unparalled peek at what a woman living in that kind of Islamic society (there are all kinds after all just like there are a vary of Western ways of life) deals with on a day to day basis and in trying to shape her own destiny.
