The bookseller of Kabul - sne Seierstad

A genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and of a country struggling to free itself from history. Award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad spent four months living in Afghanistan with a bookseller and his family in Kabul. For more than twenty years Sultan Khan had defied the authorities by continuing to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and had to watch soldiers burn his books in the streets. Seierstad also explains the cultural differences she encountered and how she found the role of women in the society both fascinating and frustrating, and admits: "I have rarely quarrelled so much as I did there. Nor have I had the urge to hit anyone as much as I did there".