Bookseller of Kabul
About a week ago I started reading The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad.
I'm going through one of those phases in which I feel woefully uneducated in the ways of the world, especially the world beyond my tiny, safe little universe.
When I was growing up, the evil empire was communism as personified by China and the Soviet Union. I have vague memories of the stories of violence and oppression in Lebanon, Israel, Iran adn Iraq, but supposedly we were safe within our borders because we had more weapons, more powerful weapons, and the star wars defense project.
News reports seem to favor the bloody and the sensational. Finding out that people who live in strange faraway lands have everyday lives and concerns not so different from our own is not in the best interest of advertising or of those who benefit financially from making us suspicious and afraid of what we don't really understand.
People in Afghanistan have families and friends and businesses. They have to figure out how to support their families, how to keep their jobs, how to accomplish their goals and follow their dreams. The Bookseller of Kabul is about one man, his family, and his love of literature, history and his country. It's not an unbiased or typical account of life in Afghanistan, but it *is* a *true* account of life in Afghanistan in much the same way that Reading Lolita in Tehran is a true account of life in Iran and Isabel Allende's writing provides insight into life in South America.
I am also looking forward to reading Seierstad's A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal.
I'm going through one of those phases in which I feel woefully uneducated in the ways of the world, especially the world beyond my tiny, safe little universe.
When I was growing up, the evil empire was communism as personified by China and the Soviet Union. I have vague memories of the stories of violence and oppression in Lebanon, Israel, Iran adn Iraq, but supposedly we were safe within our borders because we had more weapons, more powerful weapons, and the star wars defense project.
News reports seem to favor the bloody and the sensational. Finding out that people who live in strange faraway lands have everyday lives and concerns not so different from our own is not in the best interest of advertising or of those who benefit financially from making us suspicious and afraid of what we don't really understand.
People in Afghanistan have families and friends and businesses. They have to figure out how to support their families, how to keep their jobs, how to accomplish their goals and follow their dreams. The Bookseller of Kabul is about one man, his family, and his love of literature, history and his country. It's not an unbiased or typical account of life in Afghanistan, but it *is* a *true* account of life in Afghanistan in much the same way that Reading Lolita in Tehran is a true account of life in Iran and Isabel Allende's writing provides insight into life in South America.
I am also looking forward to reading Seierstad's A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal.
posted by minervasowl at 11:59 AM
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