The Bookseller of Kabul

Over vacation, I read Asne Seierstad's memoir of living in Afghanistan, post-9/11. Someone I know used to work for a Bookseller of New York and a Bookseller of Los Angeles, and told me that they are the same sort of people as the Bookseller of Kabul. So the businessman's character was depicted with 100 percent accuracy. Most interesting to me was the skillful manner in which Seirstad described events with such restraint that the reader didn't fully realize how horrified and repelled the Norwegian journalist had been by her exposure to Islamic fundamentalism -- until the end of the story. It is completely damning, and an indictment of the United States's failures in Kabul, frankly. Poor Afghanistan! 75 percent illiteracy, fear everywhere, the mullahs are back. No wonder people living in Uzbekistan would tell me, again and again, they were so happy not to live in Afghanistan...