The Bookseller of Kabul（ISBN=） 英文原版

　　This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three
decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved
persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited
extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal
international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in
its intimacy and its details – a revelation of the plight of Afghan
women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in
today’s Afghanistan.
 

　　After living for three months with the Kabul bookseller Sultan
Khan in the spring of 2002, Norwegian journalist Seierstad penned
this astounding portrait of a nation recovering from war,
undergoing political flux and mired in misogyny and poverty. As a
Westerner, she has the privilege of traveling between the worlds of
men and women, and though the book is ostensibly a portrait of
Khan, its real strength is the intimacy and brutal honesty with
which it portrays the lives of Afghani living under fundamentalist
Islam. Seierstad also expertly outlines Sultan’s fight to preserve
whatever he can of the literary life of the capital during its
numerous decades of warfare (he stashed some 10,000 books in attics
around town). Seierstad, though only 31, is a veteran war reporter
and a skilled observer; as she hides behind her burqa, the men in
the Sultan’s family become so comfortable with her presence that
she accompanies one of Sultan’s sons on a religious pilgrimage and
witnesses another buy sex from a beggar girl-then offer her to his
brother. This is only one of many equally shocking stories
Seierstad uncovers. In another, an adulteress is suffocated by her
three brothers as ordered by their mother. Seierstad’s visceral
account is equally seductive and repulsive and resembles the work
of Martha Gellhorn. An international bestseller, it will likely
stand as one of the best books of reportage of Afghan life after
the fall of the Taliban.

　　Asne Seierstad has received numerous awards for her journalism
and has reported from such war-torn regions as Chechnya, the
Balkans, Afghanistan,and Iraq. She is fluent in. five languages and
lives in Norway.

Foreword
The Proposal
Burning Books
Crime and Punishment
Suicide and Song
The Business Trip
Do You Want to Make Me Sad?
No Admission to Heaven
Billowing, Fluttering, Winding
A Third-Rate Wedding
The Matriarch
Temptations
The Call from Ali
The Smell of Dust
An Attempt
Can God Die?
The God Die?
The Dreary Room
The Carpenter
My Mother Osama
A Broken Heart
Epilogue

　　”The most intimate de*ion of an Afghan household ever
produced by a Western journalist. . . . Seierstad is a sharp and
often lyrical observer.” (New York Times Book Review
Richard McGill Murphy)
　　”An admirable, revealing portrait of daily life in a country that
Washington claims to have liberated but does not begin to
understand. Seierstad writes of individuals, but her message is
larger.” (Washington Post Book World Mark
Hertsgaard)
　　”A compelling portrait of a country at a crossroads – desperate
for tranquillity, factionalized beyond imagination, struggling both
to uphold tradition and to modernize, hoping to prove to itself and
the rest of the world that it knows peace and stability.”
(Boston Globe Scott W. Helman)
　　”An unusually intimate glimpse of a traditional Afghan family. .
. . Seierstad imbues a grim story with language of desolate
beauty.” (Entertainment Weekly S. L.
Allen)
　　”A compelling book. . . . Seierstad infiltrated a world most
readers will never see.” (Denver Post Steve
Weinberg)