With The Bookseller of Kabul, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad has given readers a first-hand look at Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it. Invited to live with Sultan Khan, a bookseller in Kabul, and his family for months, this account of her experience allows the Khans to speak for themselves, giving us a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and of a country of great cultural riches and extreme contradictions. For more than 20 years, Sultan Khan has defied the authorities--whether Communist or Taliban--to supply books to the people of Kabul. He has been arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned, and has watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. Yet he had persisted in his passion for books, shedding light in one of the world's darkest places. This is the intimate portrait of a man of principle and of his family--two wives, five children, and many relatives sharing a small four-room house in this war ravaged city. But more than that, it is a rare look at contemporary life under Islam, where even after the Taliban's collapse, the women must submit to arranged marriages, polygamous husbands, and crippling limitations on their ability to travel, learn and communicate with others.

奧斯娜·塞厄斯塔，1972年10月齣生，享譽全球的挪威戰地記者兼作傢，歐洲100位最具影響力女性之一。畢業於奧斯陸大學，主修俄語、西班牙語和哲學史，之後又到莫斯科大學攻讀政治學。曾先後擔任數傢斯堪的納維亞媒體駐俄羅斯、中國、巴爾乾半島、阿富汗、伊拉剋和美國的記者。“9·11”後，她在美國對塔利班和基地組織開戰期間赴阿富汗進行實地采訪時，曾藉住在客布爾一個書商傢中達4個月之久，通過與其傢庭成員的密切接觸而創作瞭小說《喀布爾書商》，齣版後迅速暢銷全球，榮膺十幾項國際性大奬。作者也因身為女記者深入炮火中進行采訪所錶現齣的勇氣和敏銳洞察力而成為世界新聞界的明星。