The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

 Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there. In the following spring she returned to live with an Afghan family for several months. 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 in attics all over Kabul. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship, he is also a committed Muslim with strict views on family life. As an outsider, Seierstad is able to move between the private world of the women - including Khan's two wives - and the more public lives of the men. And so we learn of proposals and marriages, suppression and abuse of power, crime and punishment. The result is a gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.

When I read the Foreword and saw that this was another non fiction book, I was quite looking forward to it after my last read (The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks).  My favoritism to fiction books may be coming to an end if this one was any good.


I am afraid it did not meet its potential.  Some great stories in the book and very entertaining and educational parts of the book BUT it was as if the author could not make her mind up as to whether she was writing an article about the situation in Kabul or whether she was trying to write an entertaining story.  It just did not flow because of this and would have been a better read if she had decided to go one way or the other- either way would have been better than this mixed bag of writing. 

It is really a shame as you can tell that there are some great, entertaining stories in there and the facts were really fascinating.

Is it worth a read despite this, no I really don't think it is as I am sure there are other books out there that will either give you the cold hard facts about Kabul in this era or fiction books that will give you the entertaining stories in a better style.

Such a shame.  Xx