After reading Åsne Seierstad’s “Afghanerne”, I have thought that I started reading at the wrong end. I started from scratch, as I usually do. Instead, I should have gone to the end. There, at the back, are just over ten pages with the title “How the book came to be”. It was then also where I flipped after about 150 pages and much wonder at what kind of text I was reading. Those pages clarify a lot, but I’m not sure if that means that the book is really successful. I come back to the narrative grip. This is how Åsne Seierstad opens the concluding text. Three main characters Three people that is, two women and one man. There is Jamila, Ariana and Bashir – but also the people around them: parents, husbands, wives, siblings and children. They were all born during important periods in the country’s history. From the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1979, via their withdrawal ten years later to the famous attacks on the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001. Through the stories of these three people and the events that surrounded them, shaped them, Seierstad tells a clear version of lines in Afghan history from the last glorious days of the monarchy until the Taliban’s total takeover of power in August 2021. Struggle from several angles The text then opens up an insight into very different sides of this tumultuous and mostly violent history. The women’s fight for the right to education and a degree of equality, the place of the Koran and the dispute over interpretation, but also the young boy Bashir’s path to becoming a Taliban fighter and commander. We are taken to battles, ambushes, suicide bombers, women producing explosives in a kitchen when the job is not to cook for the fighters. The list is long and interesting, the insights are many, the drama considerable. And, thus, seen through the actors’ eyes, their account. An important advantage of Seierstad’s approach, conversations and interviews transcribed from recordings, is a text that does not need to take a stand on right, wrong and everything in between along the way. This book doesn’t moralize or preach, and that’s fine. A sense of fiction Just as fully, I return to Åsne Seierstad’s point of view as narrator, that is, the absence of the author in the text. The narrator’s voice is omniscient, it does not emerge. This is reasonably a valid and widely used move, mostly in fiction. It is precisely the disturbing reading feeling I was left with for a long time: that I was reading a fictional text, or a more or less fictional adaptation of the documentary material. Today it is the case that the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are fluid. That’s perfectly fine, but vagueness is problematic. Missing an I The premise of what I read remained unclear, albeit less so after reading the closing credits. I perhaps miss Seierstad’s presence in the narrative text, but also the ego of the narrators. The Taliban’s self when he tells about a successful attack or the interrogations in prison. Instead, Bashir remains a male, with the distance that comes with it. Jamila’s me during the attempts at peace talks in Qatar, 2009: The latter is also among the book’s most interesting and well-written sections, together with the descriptions of the collapse of the Americans and NATO’s withdrawal and the Taliban’s takeover. It is dramaturgically exciting told. The critic’s banana peel I am possibly in danger of making the critic’s general mistake when I launch these objections: wishing for a different text than the one that exists between these covers. Therefore it is necessary to clarify what I have already said; “The Afghans” is interesting and exciting reading that opens up insight into deeply human aspects of the conflict-ridden country and the lives of the people there. Once the premise of the narrative is accepted, Jamila, Bashir and Ariana become closer to the reader. The events towards the end of the book, in the lives of the young Ariana and the Taliban, Bashir, illustrate strongly and painfully clearly the great distances in expectation and thinking that lie behind this narrative. Who lost their dreams in Afghanistan, and who won them. news reviews Photo: Kagge Title: “Afghanerne” Author: Åsne Seierstad Genre: Nonfiction Publisher: JM Stenersens Forlag Date: 20 October 2022
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