The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad- a book review

Asne Seierstad is a young journalist in post-Taliban Afghanistan who is welcomed into the home of a middle-class bookkeeper and given the freedom to experience their lives with them on a daily basis. Being a westerner, she is permitted into both the lives of the men and women and she writes about her experiences in a collection of stories that is now The Bookseller of Kabul.

My struggle with this book is that I mainly just didn't really like the bookseller Sultan Khan, who is the center of the family. While I would applaud him for his efforts to save ancient Afghani liturature from the wrath of the Taliban, when it comes to his family and friends Sultan Khan is unforgiving and cold. It also reads more like a story, when I believe it was perhaps meant to be read more of a documentary. There were so many family members in the Khan family that I got frustrated when a chapter would end and a "story" or "event" would be left unfinished, though I supposed that the author was not present to find out about the rest. Anyhow, I put this book down temporarily for A Thousand Splendid Suns, and then picked it up again just to finish it.

There was one particular chapter toward the end that I found particularly interesting, when it discusses the American's involvement with tribal warlords in hiring them to help in the search for Bin Laden. These men who have always lived in an area of Afghanistan where tribal feuds guide war and life, are suddenly given jets, bombs and cell phones to the US AirForce which are not exactly used to fight Al Qaida, and they are unable to even identify Bin Laden in a picture in a magazine.