The Bookseller of Kabul

After the Taliban fell in the spring of 2002, Åsne Seierstad lived in Kabul for four months with a bookseller and his family.

Sultan Khan disobeyed communist and Taliban authorities for over two decades in order to provide literature to the people of Kabul. The Taliban's ignorant warriors burned stacks of his books in the street as he was detained, questioned, and imprisoned by the communists. He began to conceal the majority of his inventory—nearly ten thousand books—in attics located around Kabul.

Although Khan has strong opinions about women's roles in society and family life, he also has strong feelings against censorship and a love of reading. Being an outsider, Åsne Seierstad was in a unique position since she could travel freely between the men's more open and public life and the secret, limited world of the women, including Khan's two wives.

Seierstad finds the experience to be both annoying and interesting. We hear of marriage proposals and consummations, hope and dread, crime and punishment, as she pulls back from the page and lets the Khans tell their own story. This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, bravely braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The result is a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, as well as a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history. The sensitivity and depth of The Bookseller of Kabul are astounding; it provides a window into the unexpected reality of everyday life in modern-day Afghanistan as well as an insight into the predicament faced by Afghan women.