The Bookseller Of Kabul

Author: Åsne Seierstad
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 0748108521
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'An intimate portrait of Afghani people quite unlike any other . . . compelling' CHRISTINA LAMB, SUNDAY TIMES For more than twenty years Sultan Khan, a bookseller in Kabul, defied the authorities - be they communist or Taliban - to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. A committed Muslim, Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship. Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Åsne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there and the year after she lived with an Afghan family for several months. We learn of proposals and marriages, suppression and abuse of power, crime and punishment. The result is a gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history. 'Fascinating . . . A portrait of people struggling to survive in the most brutal circumstances' DAILY MAIL

The Bookseller of Kabul

Author: Asne Seierstad
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 9780316159418
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
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.

The Angel of Grozny

Author: Sne Seierstad
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458759687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 486

Book Description
In the early hours of New Year’s Eve 1994, Russian troops invaded Chechnya, plunging the country into a prolonged and bloody conflict. A foreign correspondent in Moscow at the time, Åsne Seierstad traveled regularly to Chechnya to report on the war, describing its effects on those trying to live their daily lives amidst violence. Over the course of a decade, she traveled in secret and under the constant threat of danger.In a broken and devastated society, Seierstad lived amongst the wounded and the lost. And she lived with the orphans of Grozny, those who will shape the country’s future, asking the question: what happens to children who grow up surrounded by war and accustomed to violence?

Two Sisters

Author: Åsne Seierstad
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374716285
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
The riveting true story of two sisters’ journey to the Islamic State and the father who tries to bring them home Two Sisters, by the international bestselling author Åsne Seierstad, tells the unforgettable story of a family divided by faith. Sadiq and Sara, Somali immigrants raising a family in Norway, one day discover that their teenage daughters, Leila and Ayan, have vanished—and are en route to Syria to aid the Islamic State. Seierstad’s riveting account traces the sisters’ journey from secular, social democratic Norway to the front lines of the war in Syria, and follows Sadiq’s harrowing attempt to find them. Employing the same mastery of narrative suspense she brought to The Bookseller of Kabul and One of Us, Seierstad puts the problem of radicalization into painfully human terms, using instant messages and other primary sources to reconstruct a family’s crisis from the inside. Eventually, she takes us into the hellscape of the Syrian civil war, as Sadiq risks his life in pursuit of his daughters, refusing to let them disappear into the maelstrom—even after they marry ISIS fighters. Two Sisters is a relentless thriller and a feat of reporting with profound lessons about belief, extremism, and the meaning of devotion.

Bleeding Afghanistan

Author: Sonali Kolhatkar
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609800931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
Through in-depth research and detailed historical context, Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls report on the injustice of U.S. policies in Afghanistan historically and in the post-9/11 era. Drawing from declassified government documents and on-the-ground interviews with Afghan activists, journalists, lawyers, refugees, and students, Bleeding Afghanistan examines the connections between the U.S. training and arming of Mujahideen commanders and the subversion of Afghan democracy today. Bleeding Afghanistan boldly critiques the exploitation of Afghan women to justify war by both conservatives and liberals, analyzes uncritical media coverage of U.S. policies, and examines the ways in which the U.S. benefits from being in Afghanistan.

The Hazaras of Afghanistan

Author: S. A. Mousavi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136800166
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Study of the second largest but least well-known ethnic group in Afghanistan that also confronts the taboo subject of Afghan national identity. Largely Farsi-speaking Shi'ias, the Hazaras traditionally inhabited central Afghanistan, but because of the war are now widely scattered.

Kabul Beauty School

Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588366073
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

I Am the Beggar of the World

Author:
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 146688066X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
I Am the Beggar of the World presents an eye-opening collection of clandestine poems by Afghan women. Because my love's American, blisters blossom on my heart. Afghans revere poetry, particularly the high literary forms that derive from Persian or Arabic. But the poem above is a folk couplet—a landay, an ancient oral and anonymous form created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than 20 million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. War, separation, homeland, love—these are the subjects of landays, which are brutal and spare, can be remixed like rap, and are powerful in that they make no attempts to be literary. From Facebook to drone strikes to the songs of the ancient caravans that first brought these poems to Afghanistan thousands of years ago, landays reflect contemporary Pashtun life and the impact of three decades of war. With the U.S. withdrawal in 2014 looming, these are the voices of protest most at risk of being lost when the Americans leave. After learning the story of a teenage girl who was forbidden to write poems and set herself on fire in protest, the poet Eliza Griswold and the photographer Seamus Murphy journeyed to Afghanistan to learn about these women and to collect their landays. The poems gathered in I Am the Beggar of the World express a collective rage, a lament, a filthy joke, a love of homeland, an aching longing, a call to arms, all of which belie any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.

The Bookseller of Kabul

Author: Åsne Seierstad
Publisher: Little Brown GBR
ISBN: 9780316726054
Category : Booksellers and bookselling
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Åsne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there. In the following spring she returned to live with an Afghan family for several months. For more than twenty years Sultan Khan defied the authorities - be they communist or Taliban - to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock in attics all over Kabul. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship, he is also a committed Muslim with strict views on family life. As an outsider, Seierstad is able to move between the private world of the women - including Khan's two wives - and the more public lives of the men. And so we learn of proposals and marriages, suppression and abuse of power, crime and punishment. The result is a gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.

Kabul in Winter

Author: Ann Jones
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1466827653
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
A sharp and arresting people's-eye view of real life in Afghanistan after the Taliban Soon after the bombing of Kabul ceased, award-winning journalist and women's rights activist Ann Jones set out for the shattered city, determined to bring help where her country had brought destruction. Here is her trenchant report from inside a city struggling to rise from the ruins. Working among the multitude of impoverished war widows, retraining Kabul's long-silenced English teachers, and investigating the city's prison for women, Jones enters a large community of female outcasts: runaway child brides, pariah prostitutes, cast-off wives, victims of rape. In the streets and markets, she hears the Afghan view of the supposed benefits brought by the fall of the Taliban, and learns that regarding women as less than human is the norm, not the aberration of one conspicuously repressive regime. Jones confronts the ways in which Afghan education, culture, and politics have repeatedly been hijacked—by Communists, Islamic fundamentalists, and the Western free marketeers—always with disastrous results. And she reveals, through small events, the big disjunctions: between U.S promises and performance, between the new "democracy" and the still-entrenched warlords, between what's boasted of and what is. At once angry, profound, and starkly beautiful, Kabul in Winter brings alive the people and day-to-day life of a place whose future depends so much upon our own.