Taking advantage of a rare opportunity, the thirty-three-year-old blonde writer tracks the lives of various members of the Khan family for three months, painting a series of intriguing and vivid portraits. Through the Islamic fundamentalists' enforced burqa, she writes about a dusty land hit by drought as the grip of the Islamist fundamentalists loosens and its people find themselves amidst an identity crisis... Yet against a backdrop of shell-destroyed buildings filled with dust, life goes on: people gossip, grow fond of each other, eat sweets, and yearn for better lives. This daily existence of the Afghan people is depicted through the daily life of a deeply self-confident man who, over three decades and under successive repressive regimes, courageously defied oppression to provide books for the people of Kabul, garnering worldwide admiration. His story became an extraordinary book among the world's bestsellers. 'The Bookseller of Kabul' is astonishingly intimate in its details—it is a revelation of the human predicament in Afghanistan, a window into the remarkable truths of modern Afghan daily life.

Publishing house: Arab Scientific Publishers/Lebanon Number of Pages: 357 Year of publication: 2009