The Bookseller of Kabul

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. Translated by Ingrid Christophersen. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Seierstad has been a journalist Chechnya, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan. She got to know "Sultan" and his family and asked if she could live with them to write this work. She has written it in the form of a novel and changed all of the names. Seierstad provides a lot of interesting detail about daily life for one family in Kabul, but she layers this with her own point of view. One doesn't know whether to blame the author or the translator for the condescending tone. Still, I think we need to know as much as we can about these countries that the United States has invaded and is occupying. We need to read widely just because much what we have available to us is written in a highly subjective manner and by Westerners.

Burling 1st Floor CT 1877.5 .K48 S45 2003