The Bookseller Of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

From The Week of February 13, 2011

I imagine that all of us who read books about international conflicts do so in hopes of learning about the root causes that both underpin and empower them. The problem is, while books can grant us an understanding of a conflict's broad strokes, it can't ever get at its essential truths. These can only come through immersion in a culture. Everything short of this relies on the opinions of reporters and their subjects, people whose educations, biases, agendas, we can't possibly know and account for. And so the portrait we wind up with is impossibly distorted by fragments of moments blown up to fit the author's expectations.

So what do we do? We turn to books like The Bookseller of Kabul, point-of-view accounts which give voice to the silenced citizens from whom we would never otherwise hear a word. The Afghan family, with whom Ms. Seierstad devotes a year of her life, living under their roof, eating their food, observing their fights, gives us an incredible texture, a reality, to life in war that broader, more journalistic efforts simply cannot match. The family's mundane struggles to survive during the foundational period of the American occupation, post-Taliban, is more powerful than any summation of the key events, the policies, the generals, the corruption, the national aspirations. It shows us the heartbeat of a place, its loves and its jealousies, its terrors and its triumphs. And in doing so, it allows us to understand the cruel prejudices which have been allowed to shape a land like Afghanistan into what we see today.

Ms. Seierstad does her best to disappear inside her own book, handing the narrative completely over to the fascinating family who take her into their home. But while this grants the reader a first-hand account of life for Afghanis in war-torn Afghanistan, it runs the risk of controversy. After all, Ms. Seierstad claims to know a great deal about the emotions and motivations of her characters, intimacies which we cannot know for sure she drew out of them. But while the patriarch of the family has disputed her version of events, her characterization seems both solid and remarkable. From the stress polygamy puts on the patriarch's wives, to the silenced but intelligent daughter who is treated like a mule by the family, everyone here is believable and tragic, leaving the reader to mourn for their lost potential and hope for their better future.

The Bookseller of Kabul is experimental non-fiction. It tells a true story, but does so without the author's voice to explain where the detail emanates from. And in this, it reads like narrative fiction. Whatever its classification, it is an intense experience which, while explaining little about the overall conflict, imparts a great deal about the price the little people pay in times of war. This is a book about both the sadness and the hope of a land obliterated by zealotry and combat. I won't soon forget it. (3/5 Stars)