Western imperialism or moral relativism? You decide
Here from The Guardian, is the latest instalment in a long and disturbing saga – the fallout from Åsne Seierstad’s book The Bookseller of Kabul. I read this in in May 2004 and was bowled over by it. Which makes me feel complicit, somehow, in the resulting row.
I think the thing that has been missed in this debate, at least as far as I can see, is that Seierstad showed how the men in her account were often every bit as much victims of their society and circumstances as the women. And this made me despair for the future of the country.
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Which doesn’t support Shah Mohammed Rais’s argument that he has been portrayed as “a tyrannical traditionalist bent on imprisoning women” – since I felt he was somewhat at the mercy of the stultifying Afghan traditionalism himself (although I agree no-one was actually making him walk around in a burqa, forbidding him to work or trading him in for a good-looking teenager at the first opportunity).
Shah is an entrepreneur who, I believe, scented an opportunity in Seierstad and was peeved when things didn’t work out as he had envisaged they would. This is, I stress, just my personal impression from reading the book and following the coverage of the case. He continues to make good capital out of this whole affair and may yet achieve his aim of turning it all to his advantage.
So, are Seierstad, myself and all the other members of the book-buying public who devoured this work Western imperialists trying to tell people from other cultures how to run their lives? Or is moral relativism an even bigger evil? I tend towards the latter view but find the whole argument exausting and invite you to read the book, and the press coverage, and decide for yourself.
I just hope that Leila makes it out.
Bookseller of Kabul’s wife applies for asylum
The wife of an Afghan bookseller depicted in an international bestseller is applying for asylum in Europe because she claims the book has endangered her life.Suraya Rais is the wife of Shah Mohammed Rais, the title character in The Bookseller of Kabul by the Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad. Since its publication in 2002, the book – an account of an Afghan extended family after the fall of the Taliban – has become a hit around the world; in the UK, it was the bestselling non-English-language book of 2004.
Today, Mr and Mrs Rais claim that The Bookseller of Kabul has put their lives in jeopardy. At the weekend, it was revealed that Mrs Rais applied for asylum in Sweden in April. “Åsne Seierstad’s book has made it difficult for the family to carry on living in Afghanistan,” says Mr Rais’s lawyer, Per Danielsen. Read on here…