Book: The Bookseller of Kabul

"Grown-ups stole a glance at the fire and hastened by... It was obvious to all that this fire had not been lit by street watchmen to warm their hands.  It was a fire in the service of God"

There are many books written about war - the fighting, the battles, the death and the victory.  There are very few books that can offer such an insight into how it affects normal people day to day.  This is exactly what Åsne Seierstad aims to achieve in The Bookseller of Kabul, one of the best selling Norwegian books of all time.

The book tells the story of an Afghan family who Steierstad lived with in the spring after the fall of the Taliban.  The head of the family, Sultan Khan, owns a bookshop in Kabul that Steierstad visited when she was there with the Northern Alliance. 

Her story begins by detailing how the 'religious police' went through Sultan's bookshop looking for any book portraying a living thing - human or animal - and burnt them.  This was one of many attacks on his books made by authorities.

"These men considered anyone who loved pictures or books, sculptures or music, dance, film or free thought enemies of society... Heretical texts were overlooked.  The soldiers were illiterate and could not distinguish orthodox Taliban doctrine from heresy.  But they could distinguish pictures from letters..."

This is the first instance in which I considered just how different the Afghan culture was and is.  The book touches on this many times, from the burning of the books to the treatment of women - it is a difficult way of life to imagine for an independent Westerner who enjoys, if not always equality, at least the right to fight for it.  

Take Sultan for example.  On one hand I respected him for his efforts to keep selling books, to promote education in his country and to fight for a better situation where everyone has freedom.  On the other hand his treatment of his wives, particularly his first wife Sharifa, is not something that I would defend in any way.  Sultan still has absolute control over his family and that is accepted.

The book continues with the lives of each individual family member.  We look at both of Sultan's wives, including the situation that surrounded him on taking a second, much younger wife.  We travel with Sultan's son Mansur on a pilgrimage to Mazar-i-Sharif and feel his frustrations when Sultan will not allow it at first.  We follow the daily struggle of Leila, Sultans youngest sister, who is treated as a slave in the home.  We go with her to the Ministry of Education to become a teacher and feel her disappointment at her lack of success. 

It is difficult to imagine living like the Khans.  In Afghan terms they are lucky - they eat well and some are educated.  Many Afghan families are entirely illiterate and face a daily struggle to find enough food.  Even so, their situation is so far removed from our own:

"The once so enviable running water has been a joke for the last ten years.  On the first floor there is cold water in the pipes for a few hours each morning.  Then nothing...  Water reaches the second floor now and again, but no water ever reaches the third floor, the pressure is too weak... Every other day there is power for four hours... When there is power in one part of tow, another part is blacked out".

The book is intriguing to read.  When the program The Family was on television people watched it to see how another family might live.  We draw comparisons and judge our differences - this is what people like to do, it's just how it is.  It's the reason that Big Brother was a success and the celebrity following culture we are all a part of - people like to know about other people.  

The Bookseller of Kabul offers this insight into someone else's life, but we also have the opportunity to learn about another culture, to hear the reality of life in places we will probably never visit.  The openness and honesty of the Khan family in their opinions is surprising at times.  While it's true that the family doesn't represent every normal family in Afghanistan, it would be impossible to say that their story is not fascinating.

Book: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

"It was not we the crew were anxious about.  'The Maelstrom! The Maelstrom!' they were crying.  The Maelstrom! Could a more frightful word in a more frightful situation have sounded in our ears?"

Often described as the man who created the genre of science fiction, Jules Verne has written many fantasy adventure novels that are still so well known a century and half after they were first published..  He was more popular in Britain than his native France, perhaps due to the British preoccupation with technological advances.  While in the mid 1800s science was not so far advanced that it would seem impossible to venture to the centre of the Earth, thoughts of submarine adventure or visiting the moon (From The Earth To The Moon) were barely just being considered.  Whether Verne had heard these ideas or if they were his original thought, his imagination caused them to grow into epic adventures of which the literary world had not yet seen.

Verne took great pains to make sure that all technical and scientific elements were accurate in their detail when writing 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea to help give a sense of reality.  Unfortunately, when the book was being published in other languages the translators didn't hold the importance of Verne's precision in such high regard.  Aside from the text being heavily edited to remove anything that could be conceived as anti-British, they had trouble switching Verne's calculations from the metric to imperial system.  Readers who were unaware of this assumed that Verne just hadn't bothered.

While the scientific detail is incredible, it does make the novel more difficult to read, and chances are you will get sick of the word 'zoophyte'.  It is important to remember that Jules Verne hadn't seen what Pierre Arronax sees in the story, it is purely down to research and imagination that we take a glimpse under the oceans.  And although at the beginning it is interesting to read the long lists of creatures and plants, along with their classifications by the end of the novel I admit that I found myself skipping paragraphs.  However, they are there to add weight to the story and do help you to believe that the three captives really were under the many oceans of the world.

Science and adventure are only part of the story.  20,000 Leagues Under The Sea combines many different elements to keep the reader interested.  It investigates conflicts between the interest of the narrator, Pierre Arronax and his two companions - the loyal Conseil and restless Canadian Ned Land.  Arronax in the beginning would like to stay aboard the submarine the Nautilus to complete his own studies and Conseil will follow his 'Monsieur' wherever he chooses to go.  However, Ned Land's only interest is to escape, and much of the novel revolves around his need for freedom.  

Captain Nemo takes the three men on a journey around the world, through hidden tunnels connecting seas, to the extremes of the South Pole and the hidden continent of Atlantis.  While they are free to roam his submarine they face a lifetime aboard the vessel - Captain Nemo provides the best hospitality but at the price of never leaving.  There is one other condition and that is that when it is requested the three men must be locked in their rooms and not question the reason.  While investigating the depths of the ocean, the reader is also given glimpses of Captain Nemo's darker secrets and personality.  Nemo and his crew are enveloped in mystery - from their language to their purpose.  Many questions are left unanswered allowing the reader to exercise their own imagination.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is a book that should be on everyones read-before-they-die lists.  It is hard work to read, but it is worth the effort.  It is easy to be put off by a book described as science fiction but some of the most famous books and films are covered by this genre.  HG Wells and his War Of The Worlds or Time Machine, Arthur C Clarke with 2001 - A Space Odyssey, A Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Nineteen Eighty Four, Fahrenheit 451 - we must wonder whether any of this would have happened without Jules Verne.