Bookseller of Kabul

One can forget that, in non-fiction, the action keeps going when the book ends. Two years ago the world clutched Norwegian Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul in delight.

However, reports slowly filtered back from Afghanistan of how difficult the bookseller's life had become. Mr Rais, the bookseller, is already contracted to publish his own version of the story, presumably one that doesn't paint him as a violent patriarch. A much publicised spat with his biographer still remains unresolved. Now, his wife has received asylum in Sweden in a bid to escape the furore in Kabul and the implications of the portrayal of the Rais family. One should, as the Irish discovered years ago, be wary of Norse visitors.