In this work Asne Seierstad managed to lift me out of my own reality and into Afghanistan and a reality so very different from what I know. A world where many different ruling factions have made selling books a crime and yet a man, Sultan, persists in doing so- because he feels strongly the need for books and history in his society. He is a free thinker and a modern man, but in his home he rules with an intensity that makes me shudder. It is so hard for me to grasp a place where as a woman you have no options, as I think of them now, no freedom to follow your heart or to walk your own path. A place where it is tantamount to adultery to accept letters from a boy and where a woman is most honorable if she expresses no will of her own.

Don’t misunderstand me- this is a slice of life from Kabul and does not represent the whole, a whole that I have very little understanding of… but this slice is mesmerizing. Seierstad artfully creates a space for you to sit with her as she observes this Afghani family trying to survive and thrive in the impossible seeming world that they live in.

Simply put this work is amazing.