The bookseller of Kabul / Åsne Seierstad ; translated by Ingrid Christophersen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seierstad, Åsne, 1970-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Bokhandleren i Kabul. English

Language:

English

Norwegian

Subjects (All):

Khan family.

Seierstad, Åsne, 1970-.

Travel.

Booksellers and bookselling.

Kabul (Afghanistan)--Biography.

Kabul (Afghanistan).

Kabul (Afghanistan)--Social life and customs.

Booksellers and bookselling--Afghanistan--Kabul.

Seierstad, Åsne, 1970---Travel--Afghanistan--Kabul.

Seierstad, Åsne.

Manners and customs.

Afghanistan--Kabul.

Genre:

Nonfiction.

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xvi, 288, 9 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Back Bay paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, 2004.

Summary:

From the Publisher: With The Bookseller of Kabul, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad has given readers a first-hand look at Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it. Invited to live with Sultan Khan, a bookseller in Kabul, and his family for months, this account of her experience allows the Khans to speak for themselves, giving us a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and of a country of great cultural riches and extreme contradictions. For more than 20 years, Sultan Khan has defied the authorities-whether Communist or Taliban-to supply books to the people of Kabul. He has been arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned, and has watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. Yet he had persisted in his passion for books, shedding light in one of the world's darkest places. This is the intimate portrait of a man of principle and of his family-two wives, five children, and many relatives sharing a small four-room house in this war ravaged city. But more than that, it is a rare look at contemporary life under Islam, where even after the Taliban's collapse, the women must submit to arranged marriages, polygamous husbands, and crippling limitations on their ability to travel, learn and communicate with others.

Contents:

Foreword

Proposal

Burning books

Crime and punishment

Suicide and song

Business trip

Do you want to make me sad?

No admission to heaven

Billowing, fluttering, winding

Third-rate wedding

Matriarch

Temptations

Call from Ali

Smell of dust

Attempt

Can God die?

Dreary room

Carpenter

My mother Osama

Broken heart

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes a reading group guide.

"First published in English [in slightly different form and without readers' guide] in Great Britain ... [and] in the U.S. in hardback by Litlle Brown and Company ... 2003"--Title page verso.

ISBN:

0316159417

9780316159418

OCLC:

56827892

Online:

Publisher description