What do You think about The Bookseller Of Kabul (2004)?
In keeping in line with my Afghanistan kick, I discovered this book online and got it from the library. The premise of the book is this: Its non-fiction, written in novel form. Basically, this author (female from Norway) lived with a family for a period of time and interviewed them about their family. So you get the honest workings and day to day life of this family. The are really far from normal. They are all literate(rare for Afghanistan), as the father is a bookseller, and some of them have been educated abroad and some speak English. But even though they are more privileged than most in Afghanistan, they still face hard times. Dealing with the Taliban who banned all books and anything art or culture related...this father was actually imprisoned at times. Its just so sad to me how this country was destroyed by the Taliban. Not that the war with Russia was good, but the Taliban destroyed museums and artifacts. Thousands of years of history and culture...decimated within months. You can't replace that stuff.
—Dana
وصف حياة أسرة أفغانيه, ذلك الشعب الذي يحيطه الغموض و لا يدري أحد ما الذي يدور فعلاً داخل أسوار بيوته , استطاعت الكاتبه ان تقنع رب الأسرة بأن تعيش مع أسرته و تراقب حياتهم لتؤلف كتابها الذي يوصف بانه الوصف الأكثر حميميه لحياة عائليه أفغانيه الذي استطاع صحفي غربي كتابته على الإطلاقتستطيع فعلاً تخيل الجدران االمثقوبه بالرصاص و مشاهدة الأطفال الذين يسيل المخاط من انوفهم و تشعر بلذة استمتاعهم بتناول الأطعمه الغنيه بالدهن و اللحم و الأرز كما تشعر بالتعاطف مع جميع شخصيات القصه بدءً من بيبي غول الجده الام انتهاءً بليلى أصغر الإخوه وأحقرهم كونها انثى مروراً بشاكيلا العانس و منصور المراهق الثائر وصونيا الحبلى و شريفه التي هجرها زوجها والشخصيه المسيطره و التي لا يرد لها سلطان خان عائل الأسره الذي لا ترد له كلمه و لا تدخل الشفقه قلبه!!كتاب رائع زاخر بالأحداث والشخصيات يكشف النقاب عن كثير من عادات الشعب الأفغاني و يجعلك تعيش مع نسائه داخل البوركا!!يستحق لحظاتي الممسروقه خلال اليوم لمتابعة قرائته :)
—Donabilla
Okay so the author seems very naive, and that's a pretty safe bet. She is knowledgeable however, so I'll give her that. I wouldn't take this book seriously if you're looking for some real social or historical insight into Afghanistan. It really pales in that sense. If you're looking for a light read and a good story, in that sense, it's good and can offer some inspiration. So it's all right so far.--All right, just finished it. It was interesting and page-turning, but the author's tone really aggravated me. She spoke sardonically of situations that held little humour. Also, she assumed a sort of deep knowledge of her subjects and largely oversimplified the context in which the Khan family lived. She started to speak in like a personal third person, as if she understood deeply the characters' thoughts. I do not believe she had this understanding and therefore do not think she should have conveyed it as such. It is trespassing; even the best journalist/reporters cannot assume the character's inner beliefs and feelings.She presupposes a lot. Living with a family for a few months and only interacting with the three English-speaking members of the family does not merit her sweeping generalizations. Granted, she makes a disclaimer that the Khan family does not represent all Afghanis. She has an obvious oversight with regard to her generalizing her own observations to proclaim so much about the family. Not only does she entirely write herself out of the story, which completely limits the reader's ability to validate whether or not her interactions yielded this much understanding about the family, but she disregards the fact that many of her observations might be from an oblique angle and that her presence itself undoubtedly must have affected the family. Her observations are without citation, in that sense, because she does not give her analysis any supporting framework or context.It also lacked a central theme or a point. After reading it, I can't say there was some message she got across to me, just a series of loosely related anecdotes. No real declaration, but there were some beautiful nuances. Other than that, no real thesis.Pros: she described characters beautifully. It was surprising how you could at once hate and love a character, know nothing about them and then second guess yourself and find yourself completely enthralled in their identities. She talked about real people and she made them real in her pages with her intimate detailing of idiosyncratic observations. You got a sense of the reality of her characters in their interactions. I couldn't quite tell if she translated the characters' stories with love or contempt, but I guess it doesn't really matter in the end, because it's the reader. And I guess as a reader I loved them and hated them so...hey.The book was really despondent. There wasn't anything really hopeful about it, and any hope I could manage to find, the author emphatically dashed. I think she was actively propagating that Afghanistan was a place with no hope of improving and that it stagnated in archaic traditions and had no way out. Most exposes will at least bestow a sense of felicity upon the reader in the form of some meager optimism, but this author was not that geneous. In this way, I disagree with her portrayal. Albeit it being a nonfiction, and although she can't embellish with happy moments, her narrations of anything good were few and far between. I think that even in the worst of scenarios, which the Khan family did not represent, there could be some light shed, but she just made the whole story dismal and lacking any connection to a future ambition for the country, like she was just telling a tragedy and leaving.I guess I'm happy I read it. I guess I kinda liked it--but somewhat grudgingly.
—Em
