In an interview on Islam

Your next book is a real story even though it is not sold as such, Asne Seierstad’s The Bookseller of Kabul.

This is really a fantastically written book by a Norwegian journalist who went to stay with an Afghan family for a few months. And the reason why it is so cleverly written is because it is written as a story but it is actually based on the author’s own experience of living with this family called Khan. She writes it in a literary way – we are reading about characters, their feelings and what they are thinking. But it’s based on what she was told by various people from the Khan family.

Some of them don’t come out of it very well, do they, especially the men?

Yes, the book is looking at an Afghan family living in Kabul shortly after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. It’s really interesting because we are learning about the legacy of the Taliban. She touches on all sorts of issues and the central part of it is the male dominance of that society and the role of women.

And, of course, after the Taliban that started changing.

Their strict religious dominance had stopped girls being able to go to school but when they left girls could start going back to school. There were no religious police roaming the streets. But, of course, there were lots of remnants of Taliban thinking and the male dominance was one of them.

The bookseller has two wives. He takes a considerably younger 16-year-old wife. So the book touches on polygamy, marriage proposals and how young women are particularly sought after by these older men. Obviously it is looking at religion, but it is also looking at the cultural expectations at such a critical time for that country.