Word: seierstad
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...course, the two worlds can meet. Afghan Shah Muhammad Rais claimed that his betrayal as a domestic tyrant in the global best-seller The Bookseller of Kabul, by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad, exposed him to dishonor. So Rais did a very Western thing, launching a lawsuit against Seierstad for defamation in Norway. Then he went one better: Rais now has a deal with a Norwegian publisher for a book of his own. A spot on Oprah has to be next...
...course, the two worlds can meet. Afghan Shah Muhammad Rais claimed that his portrayal as a domestic tyrant in the global best seller The Bookseller of Kabul by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad exposed him to dishonor. So he did a very Western thing, suing Seierstad for defamation in Norway. Then he went one better: Rais now has a deal with a Norwegian publisher for a book of his own. A spot on Oprah has to be next...
...That's about all the emancipation the women are permitted. To Seierstad, the middle-aged Khan has been conditioned to think of them as chattel, taking a second spouse, a comely adolescent, when he tires of his aging wife. He forces his educated youngest sister to sacrifice her dreams of becoming an English teacher for an arranged marriage with her unemployed cousin, a man who has never opened a book. "In his heart he wanted Afghanistan to be a modern country," writes Seierstad, "but when it came to ruling his family, Sultan had only one model: his father...
...Storyteller's Daughter, British-born Afghan Saira Shah is unable to deliver as much insight as Seierstad does into the culture of her "lost homeland." Shah's uneven account of her attempts to reconcile the enchanting Afghanistan of her exiled father's tales with her own harrowing encounters relies on clich?d Western stereotypes: the Taliban are evil oppressors, the mujahedin noble warriors. Few of her subjects come across as real?which is precisely what makes Seierstad's nuanced portraits so compelling. While traveling with her romanticized mujahedin, for example, Shah is devastated to learn that they have been selling...
...Though Shah chronicles appalling scenes?three sisters are forced to watch the murder of their mother by the Taliban?they are pared down to a made-for-TV pathos that is too easy to shrug off. In contrast, Seierstad's women, victimized by a tyrannical system that has changed little since the fall of the Taliban, are complex and disturbingly unforgettable. Neither Seierstad's closed world of the Khan household nor Shah's war-rent Afghanistan make for comfortable reading, but both books offer a rare glimpse of life beneath the burqa in a land that is too often portrayed...