The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Bookseller of Kabul
Book Review: The best book I have read so far this year
Summary: 5 Stars
A fabulous insight into the life of an Afghan family. The author stayed with this family over a period of several months and observed their lives and listened to their stories. They are not a typical Afghan family; in fact they are quite wealthy and relatively well educated. We see how the younger sons struggle having to do their father or older brothers' bidding and how the family's women suffer when the younger brother's frustrations are taken out on them (fortunately verbally). We see how the family patriarch, Sultan, runs his businesses and his family, what the life is like for the wife based in Pakistan compared to the one in Kabul. Women's issues are still not taken seriously in this part of the world; it will be a long slow process. This book is not trying to change the world, just bring us a verbal snapshot, as the author saw it, at the time after the Afghan war. Highly recommended to all fans of biographies, but I feel that this can cross over and appeal to anyone interested in the country, people or culture, or even general current affairs.Book Review: A better understanding of a whole different culture.
Summary: 5 Stars
With all the controversial news stories about Afghanistan and Muslim faith recently I decided that I would like some form of reference and after watching Richard and Judy (which did a book review of it) I decided that this would be me first step to understanding a bit more.I felt that all the people written about in the book had amazing bravery for choosing to live in the world that they did. I also felt angry at their lack of kindness towards each another.
What I found most intriguing and surprising was how different Afghanistan was not so many moons ago. That Kabul very much was part of the Western world and that women wore skirts, blouses and make-up and didn't have to cover themselves with the ugly burka.
I would recommend this book to anyone and I think the government should make it be read in schools. It has encouraged me to read more biographies about this part of the world.
Book Review: Dissapointing
Summary: 1 Stars
Extremley boring book. If you like fast moving books such as Sold, Slave or Princess, then this one will really let you down.Each chapter tells the story of someone in the family, but the pre-amble tells of a more interesting life of the bookshop owner and his fight for his beloved books. You read the book waiting for this "fascinating" life staory to begin and it does not.
The chapters on the family members are very badly written with no fast pace or rhythem to them so it makes very heavy reading. Far too much detail and not enough "story".
Dont waste your money...
Book Review: It may not be the truth, but it gives you the truth
Summary: 4 Stars
Enlightening. Perhaps too beautifully crafted to be the whole truth, it nevertheless feels as if it is the truth.Reading subsequent criticism makes you conscious of the fictional conceit of the biographical story. But it gives you a wonderful insight into a different culture, which you feel approximates to the truth.
Book Review: Fiction and polemic presented as fact
Summary: 1 Stars
If a book like this had been written about a European family, the author would have been sued to kingdom come. The fact the victims are Afghani should not make it justifiable. Asne Seierstad takes all her prejudices about Afghanistan and Islam and projects them onto these people. The fact that some of those prejudices are entirely justifiable -- Afghanistan is undoubtedly one of the most backward of Muslim societies, and the understandings of Islam and resultant attitudes that prevail there are treated with contempt by Muslims elsewhere -- does not make the approach valid. An example is her account of how the bookseller purchased a twelve-year-old beggar girl for his teenage son to rape. That has subsequently been admitted to have been made up, on the basis of how Seierstad thought they might behave towards women. According to the Guardian (September 25, 2003), Middle East anthropologists, such as the Norwegian Professor Unni Wikan, doubt the authenticity of much of the book - "especially some of those bits she gives in quotation marks". He said: "There is no way she could have possibly had such access to people's hearts and minds. The moment I saw it in Norwegian, I thought it would be a catastrophe when it came out in English. She has revealed the secrets of the women, which is shameful and dishonourable. It will be regarded as an affront for its lack of respect for Afghans and Muslims."
The way the Seierstad assumes to be able to narrate people's innermost thoughts, feelings and motivations is particularly galling, given that she did not speak their language, and only the bookseller himself knew English. It is unlikely that he explained to her how much his wife hates him, or how much his children resent him. It can only be that she imagined that that was how they must be feeling and projected those suppositions - defined by her own values and assumptions, of course - into the minds and mouths of those people.
Read this book, if you like, not to learn anything about Afghanistan, but to learn just how badly wrong Western observers can get things when they try to understand non-western societies and people, and are arrogant enough to judge them.