{"product_id":"o-livreiro-de-cabul","title":"The Bookseller of Kabul","description":"For over twenty years, Sultan Khan battled authorities, both communist and Taliban, to provide books to the residents of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned; and he watched Taliban soldiers burn piles and piles of books in the streets. Yet, he persisted in his passion for books. He even hid thousands of copies in attics throughout the city, nurturing the dream of seeing his collection of 10,000 volumes on Afghan history and literature become the core of a new National Library, sowing some light in one of the darkest places in the world. A New York Times bestseller, *The Bookseller of Kabul* was considered by critics to be one of the best reportage books on Afghan life after the fall of the Taliban. After living in Kabul for three months with bookseller Sultan Khan, Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad composed this portrait of the extreme contradictions and richness of that country. A moving account of the daily life of an Islamic family and the struggles of these people to acquire knowledge and communicate. An intimate portrait of a man, his principles, and his family—two wives, five children, and numerous relatives sharing a small four-room apartment in a devastated city, recovering from war and tragic political upheavals. While facing daily challenges and tensions, the family also tries to live a semblance of normalcy through work, shopping one day, cooking one moment and playing the next, getting married, and sharing joys. As a Westerner, she had the privilege of moving between the worlds of women and men. Hidden behind the burqa, she witnessed accounts of clan feuds; the sexual exploitation of young widows awaiting food rations from international aid organizations; an adulteress suffocated with a pillow by her three brothers on their mother's orders; the exile of Sultan Khan's first wife to Pakistan after remarrying a 16-year-old girl; of the bookseller's teenage son, forced to work 12 hours a day with no chance to study. Women, in particular, are the protagonists of shocking stories. Even after the fall of the Taliban, they submit to arranged marriages, polygamous husbands, and limitations on travel, study, and communication with others. These and many other stories, shocking to Western eyes, make up this unique narrative, revealing aspects of the country that few foreigners would witness. Through an engaging, almost literary narrative, Åsne Seierstad gives voice to the Khan family, introducing the reader to a collection of moving characters that reflect the contradictions of Afghanistan. For example, the protagonist, despite being a man of letters, is a tyrant in his family and business dealings, and driven by radicalism. Proof of this is that, in 2003, when he received an English copy of this book, Shah Mohammed Rais, the Kabul bookseller who inspired the character Sultan Khan, immediately filed a lawsuit against the author.","brand":"Totvsrj-record-dc","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47159818223868,"sku":"9788501072870","price":74.9,"currency_code":"BRL","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0722\/9197\/5420\/files\/cff580ead2aef9b22b66ad6f9acac3c8.jpg?v=1780716262","url":"https:\/\/www.record.com.br\/en\/products\/o-livreiro-de-cabul","provider":"Editora Record","version":"1.0","type":"link"}