{"id":37,"date":"2009-02-03T12:39:37","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T16:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/?p=37"},"modified":"2009-02-03T12:39:37","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T16:39:37","slug":"bokhandleren-i-kabul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/norwegian\/bokhandleren-i-kabul\/","title":{"rendered":"Bokhandleren i Kabul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps some of you have heard about the book Bokhandleren i Kabul <\/strong>(The Bookseller\u00a0from Kabul) written by \u00c5sne Seierstad <\/strong>in 2003.\u00a0 Seierstad <\/strong>traveled to Afghanistan\u00a0two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and lived with an Afghani family for three months.\u00a0 The head of the household, Shah Muhammad Rais, was a bookseller with many wives.\u00a0 Bigamy, arranged marriage, and unequal treatment of women is commonplace in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Seierstad <\/strong>disguised herself in a burka while she experienced the life of an Afghani woman and observed the lives of Afghani citizens.<\/p>\n

Seierstad <\/strong>wrote a novel about her experience in Afghanistan living with the bookseller and his family.\u00a0 Since its publication, there has been much controversy surrounding the book.\u00a0 Rais <\/strong>actually took Seierstad <\/strong>to court in Norway for unfairly depicting his personality, his family, and his country.\u00a0 Rais <\/strong>claims that he supports women’s rights and opposes extremism.\u00a0 He\u00a0points to\u00a0his status as a bookseller to try to prove that he has helped to bring diverse voices to Afghanistan over the years.\u00a0 Seierstad <\/strong>stands by her accounts detailed in the book that portray Rais <\/strong>as an ordinary Afghani man who has endured a tough life under several different regimes.\u00a0 Rais’ <\/strong>treatment of women is not uncommon in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Seierstad <\/strong>says that she simply wrote about the lives of those she witnessed.\u00a0 She simply wanted to bring a personal account of life in Afghanistan today to light for the rest of the world to be aware of and think about.<\/p>\n

Rais <\/strong>and his family (including many wives and children) live scattered outside of Afghanistan now, as they do not feel comfortable in their home country after being exposed by Seierstad.\u00a0 <\/strong>Some of the family members have sought refugee status in Norway and Sweden and some have ended up in the United States.\u00a0 Rais <\/strong>wrote his own account of his life in his book, ‘There once was a bookseller in Kabul.’\u00a0 I have read Seierstad’s <\/strong>bok, but not yet Rais’.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I haven’t thought about this book for several years now, since the controversy\u00a0was a hot topic of conversation (even in\u00a0our newspapers).\u00a0 I\u00a0was just perusing the Norwegian newspaper and saw a new controversy about Bokhandleren i Kabul.\u00a0 <\/strong>Students at a school in Michigan were assigned the book to read and some of their parents have argued that the\u00a0contents of the book are inappropriate for high school students.\u00a0 Specifically, some have claimed the book is pornographic.\u00a0 In all of the controversy that this book has sparked, the idea of the book as pornographic had never been mentioned.\u00a0 Some parents are saying that the book is pornographic because one of the girls is raped and assaulted.\u00a0 The copies of the book are sitting in an office until the school decides what to do with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seierstad <\/strong>heard about the controversy in Michigan and simply said that these parents must have read the book with an extremely distorted view to think that it is pornographic.\u00a0 I encourage you all to read the book and develop your own opinion about the importance of Seierstad’s <\/strong>account of reality in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps some of you have heard about the book Bokhandleren i Kabul (The Bookseller\u00a0from Kabul) written by \u00c5sne Seierstad in 2003.\u00a0 Seierstad traveled to Afghanistan\u00a0two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and lived with an Afghani family for three months.\u00a0 The head of the household, Shah Muhammad Rais, was a bookseller with many wives.\u00a0 Bigamy…<\/p>\n

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