[Пятхъдесят Шест]

I just finished this book and now I'm free to tackle Dead Souls.

But before I start that, I must first recommend The Bookseller of Kabul to you all. Its the true account of a Norwegian journalist (Asne Seierstad) who travels to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. While there she meets Sultan Khan who owns a bookstore in Kabul. She is fascinated by him and soon asks if she could live with his family and write a book about it. Incredible insight on an everyday family that lives in a troubled part of the world. Most of it is pretty sad. Either way, it may be of interest to some of you.

[!@#$%!]

oh, hah hah, i was just posting in reference to the gogol read.

hm... sad books... maybe another time. humor in the face of disaster is sorta the thing i like.

[Hip Priest]

It's a great book. This guy is supposed to be very 'modern', so to speak, but he turns out to be something of a beast, it's a very sad situation.

Asne Seierstad is a very interesting, cool woman. The follow up book to 'Bookseller', 100 Days (I think!) is also worth reading. She is a very good journalist, and a very decent person. I'm very fond of her.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Well, its sad. But that seems like a given if we're talking about Afghanistan. There are also many funny parts in the books, or at least what I precieve to be funny. Listening to American 80s pop music while making a pilgrimage to Mazir-I-Sharif, through snow capped and mined mountain roads of Afghanistan is fucking hilarious!

[Hip Priest]

Well, I think that the public image of this guy - the 'liberated, modern' man - is something that very much exists in Afghanistan, and is something that many Afghanis were waiting to become (but were prevented from becoming by the Taliban). Asne started thinking he was a genuine representative of that group, but found things to be very different. He pursued her afterwards, attemping to sue and issuing various threats, but she stuck by everything that she wrote.

As I say, I'm very very fond of her indeed.

I agree about the light-hearted bits - she's a very gifted (and experienced) journalist, she pitches her writing with the exact balance neccessary.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

My thought going into reading the book was that the Khan family would change the way I viewed Islamic households, but you're right. He was a total asshole.

The chapters about his sister Leila were the worst.

I also found the homosexual flower boys that pampered the warlords to be quite funny too.

[Hip Priest]

The fact that he turned out to be a monster is why the book sold do well, and why the world got to hear of the lovely and talented Asne Seierstad.

From the point of view of Asne's career, his true nature was a godsend of course - I imagine that if it had all gone smoothly, this low-key Norweigian book would be unheard-of to rest of us.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Has she written other books? She spent time in Iraq and Chechnya too, so the books tells me.

[Hip Priest]

A Hundred and One Days; A Baghdad Journal. It basically a collecion of pieces formed into a whole. Asne wasn't overkeen on releasing it, as I recall - it was more of a contract thing to follow up Bookseller.

Apart from that, she's been doing that kind of journalism in Norway for a long time.