Bookseller of Kabul author Åsne Seierstad: 'It's not possible to write a neutral story'

The Bookseller of Kabul propelled Åsne Seierstad to global literary renown – and then to court. Did she exploit her subjects' privacy and trust in her portrayal of Afghan family life? And what does the case mean for journalism
Amelia Hill
The Guardian, Saturday 31 July 2010 

 Asne Seierstad: "If I lose, then I have to accept that my way of writing books is not the way society says it's OK to write." Photograph: Elin Hoyland

In three weeks, Åsne Seierstad will give birth to her second child. Substantial rebuilding work is being done to her house in Oslo and her young son is driving her neighbours to despair every morning with his new drum kit. But all of this is nothing to the storm Norway's most successful author has gone through in the past few days.
Last week, Seierstad learned that she had lost the first legal stage of a literary tussle over her representation of the real-life subject of her bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul, which has fascinated her readers around the world for almost a decade. "Even though I'm in the middle of this and it's boiling right now, I can see that it's a fascinating situation and an important debate about who can and should, write what – and in what way," she says
Seierstad was a war correspondent before she exchanged the front lines to write the book that made her name, and which could now ruin it.
Provoking controversy almost from publication, The Bookseller of Kabul is a compelling portrait of an Afghan bookseller, a local hero who risked his life to save the literary heritage of his country and publicly argued for women's rights and liberal ideals. But, in the course of the book, the eponymous hero is revealed by Seierstad to be a tyrant who mercilessly oppressed his own family, enslaving his wives and refusing education to his sons.
It quickly became the bestselling nonfiction book in Norwegian history. It was translated into 29 languages and topped the international bestseller charts. Tim Judah, reviewing it in the Observer, called it "compulsive, repulsive and frightening". "If this is what life is like in the family of Afghanistan's answer to Tim Waterstone, there is clearly no hope for Afghanistan," he added. Another reviewer said it was "an emotive indictment of a horrible society".
But then, the central character stepped out from its pages and repudiated the book. Instead of staying quietly put where she left him, in Kabul, Shah Muhammad Rais bought a business-class flight from the Afghan capital to Norway, hired a lawyer and launched a counter-publicity trail through the Norwegian media, appearing on television and the front pages of newspapers, accusing Seierstad of treachery.


The full Amelia Hill story at The Guardian.