The Book of the Month is a book suggestion released the first week of each month. This is a great place to find recommendations for literature for use in your book club or just for individual leisure reading.

“The Bookseller of Kabul” by award winning journalist Asne Seierstad is the August Book of the Month.

In this compelling nonfiction book, Seierstad treks to Afghanistan just weeks after the September 11th terrorist attacks occurred in the United States in 2001.

Her destination? The home of the Muslim bookseller of Kabul, Sultan Khan. With two wives, daughters and a headstrong adult son all under one roof, Seierstad lives with the family for an extended period of time, catching a realistic glimpse of Muslim life during wartime in Afghanistan.

Seierstad gains footing in both the male and female worlds. Thanks to her burka, she experiences the true inconveniences and limitations placed on women, while also having full access to the men’s world because of her western influence.

She details wonderfully the culture and the experiences she encounters, while also giving readers an eye-opening view on the realities for both men and women in Afghanistan. She shows how Sultan Khan, the family patriarch preserved his books from the Taliban, storing them in the attics of friends, often at the risk of all of their lives.

Through her place within the family, Seierstad does encounter some difficult realities of the Muslim way of life, such as the murder of a teenage girl who shames the family by being associated with a village boy, as well as some difficult realities of the double life of Sultan Khan's son. Because of some of the graphic atrocities detailed, I give the book 4 out of 5 stars. Though these are the realities of her experience, I would warn people this is a part of the book so you are prepared, and wouldn't recommend this for anyone under the age of 18.

Overall, Seierstad's perspective also gives a clearer understanding of the beliefs and multi-faceted far reaching effects of the Muslim way of life, and how that fabric is being stretched and challenged, particularly as Afghanistan is being showered with bombs during the writing of the book.

I would recommend “The Bookseller of Kabul” because it reads very easily, and is extremely interesting and insightful into a world that seems less scary and foreign once you crack this book.

For those interested in creating an ethnic experience at a book club, you can try this Afghani recipe.

"Oshi joor-rawtee" (Afghani rice & mung beans)
You’ll need:
1 cup Mung beans
3½ cup Water
1 cup Raw rice
½ teaspoon Salt or to taste
1½ teaspoon Ground cuminseed
¼ teaspoon Pepper

Cook rice and add other ingredients after cooking beans.

Enjoy!