The Bookseller of Kabul

The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad, Barcelona, Ed 62, 2009 (2002)
Amid the field of fiction and the testimony of a travel book is constructed The Bookseller of Kabul. A text of the Norwegian war correspondent, as he explains in the preface, he spent one year with the family of a bookseller in that city. Sultan Khan is a gender uncertainty which disturbs the reading, irregular, of the book. There are more narrative chapters, some more testimonials. There are scenes that have enough of the others, need more … She expresses himself in the introduction: “I chose the narrative form, but I have relied on real scenes in which I myself took part or that I have been explained by those who have lived. [...] As I am, obviously, an omniscient author, when describing the inner dialogues and reflections is only because they themselves told me what they thought and felt. “(p. 12).

In this way draws particular attention to the fact that I can locate any witness in the story. There is a false attempt at objectivity contrasting Western eyes are ever present reality, which takes away the possibility of having built a novel in which characters like the bookseller himself and some members of his family, sister Leila and the two women, Sharifa and Sonya, would have a more adapted to the reality that they offer.
Nevertheless, his reflections on the clothes of the country regarding the status of women are very suggestive: “As for me, I felt like a kind of being a hermaphrodite. [...] Could avoid the rigid canons respect Clothing of Afghan women and had allowed me to go wherever he wanted. However, I often put on the burqa, more than anything to leave me alone. [...] Behind the burqa, in addition, I could see without look “(p. 15).

This is the contradiction, the prison to be free. Similarly, the obsession with having only sons is omnipresent in the desires of expectant mothers, as captured in the construction of Mary’s silences, during a marriage; Mary was with Hafez “is now pregnant with her second time and terrified of thinking that might be a girl.” (p. 230). Is a book to learn from a little more difficult interaction between sexes in the Eastern world.