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The Bookseller of Kabul has a new literary ambition: to take a bus across the rubble-strewn roads of his war-torn homeland, offering a "mobile" bookshop service to those living in the most remote regions.
Shah Muhammad Rais gained notoriety after journalist Asne Seierstad wrote a bestselling novel, The Bookseller of Kabul, on his life running a bookshop in the Afghan capital after the fall of the Taleban.
Rais, who regards himself as a books missionary, told the BBC World Service he was seeking to satisfy Afghans' voracious appetite for books and reading, even in the midst of conflict and poverty. He recently returned from north Afghanistan after selling almost all his tomes in 40 days. He is preparing his converted bus for another journey north, and beyond.
"Afghans love books, actually, but they don't have any ... The war destroyed everything. Not only their houses and their irrigation systems but their soul is also damaged. Books will educate Afghans to live happily in Afghanistan and forget their sorrows and their tragedy and misfortunes."
Rais has managed to keep his business afloat since 1972, despite the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and the Taleban's rigid approach to literature and learning. He has since become the country's leading bookseller. In Afghanistan, he is respected for having risked his life to promote literature, being imprisoned twice by the Communists, then by the Taleban.
When he was freed, he hid books in attics across Kabul and smuggled some to Pakistan. After the fall of the Taleban in 2001, the world's press sought to interview "the man who saved the books", but it was Seierstad who was granted access into his world.
- Independent
