Title: Great Fiction, Questionable Reality
Product review: Sometimes the best fiction is that which is grounded in some degree of reality. If Asne Seierstad is looking to write a wonderful fiction novel, a novel that reflects more of her journalistic intuition than reality, then she has succeeded.If she was attempting to write a reasoned, insightful, factual account of her time in Afghanistan, she failed miserably.This book reifies all the comfortable, consumable stereotypes about Afghanistan and the Afghan people that exist in our media. Men bad, women good. End of story. No accounting for ethnic differences across the diverse landscape of Afghanistan, no accounting for differences in religious belief, no accounting for socioeconomic conditions.Setting aside the brutal truth that this book laughably fails at being serious, it's a good story. Just take it for what it is: A nice piece of fiction grounded in the gritty reality of post-Taliban Afghanistan.
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