Asne seierstad biography definition

Norwegian journalist and author (born 1970)

Åsne Seierstad (born 10 February 1970) is a Norwegian freelance journalist and writer, best known for her accounts of everyday life in war zones – most notably Kabulafter 2001, Baghdad in 2002 and the ruined Grozny in 2006.

Personal and professional life

Seierstad was born in Oslo, but grew up in Lillehammer, Norway to "a feminist author mother", Lector Frøydis Guldahl, and "a leftist politician father", Assistant Professor Dag Seierstad [no] (b. 1936) She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Oslo where she majored in Russian, Spanish and history of ideas.

From 1993 until 1996 she reported for the Arbeiderbladet in Russia and in 1997 from China. From 1998 until 2000 she worked for the national public broadcaster NRK where she reported from the Serbian breakaway province of Kosovo. With Their Backs to The World: Portraits of Serbia, her first book, is an account of this time. (This book was extended and republished in 2004 when she again visited Serbia. The name was changed slightly, to Portraits of Serbia, indicating that Serbia's back was no longer turned to the world.)

As a reporter, she is particularly remembered for her work in war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently Chechnya, as well as for her reports on the September 11 attacks in the United States. The Bookseller of Kabul, her second, bestselling book, is an account of the time she spent living with an Afghan family in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Her other books include One Hundred And One Days: A Baghdad Journal which describes the three months she spent in Iraq in the build-up to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003; Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechnya, an account of the time she spent in Chechnya after the war; and One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (2015), which is the basis fo

I realised a few minutes into interviewing Åsne Seierstad how she is able to talk to so many people outside her culture and have them speak to all of us. She listens, and with genuine care. She is not here with all answers. Rather she converses, going back and forth, asking questions, letting me seek clarifications. As she says in the interview, she takes no position or value as granted, and thinks through each of them even while answering the question.

This was for me the most admirable value in the Norwegian journalist, who is known around the world for her compelling portraits of everyday life in war-inflicted Afghanistan, Iraq, and Chechnya, in The Bookseller of Kabul, One Hundred and One Days, and Angel of Grozny respectively. These are only some of the countries she has worked in and written about – her work has also focused on her own country Norway, and gone as far as Serbia, Kosovo, and the USA.

Seierstad is most renowned for her second book, though. The Bookseller of Kabul, written like a novel, is a work of reportage, focusing on a bookseller’s family in Kabul, Afghanistan during Taliban rule. While she writes in detail about his endeavour to sell censored books during the conflict, she also focuses on the patriarchy in the country, and specifically in the bookseller’s house, which, as it happens, led to controversy. Shah Muhammad Rais, the man in question, filed a defamation suit against the journalist, who, after being found guilty by the lower court, was acquitted in her appeal to the higher courts.

Talking to Scroll.in during the Jaipur Literature Festival, Seierstad spoke of her journalistic practice, and the values she brings to her work. But, most important, she talked about radicalisation, and one of her recent books, One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway and Its Aftermath. In here are stories of some of the victims of the 2011

6-5-2005

Åsne Seierstad

A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal, published by Virago

December 12, 2004

Reportage: A Hundred and One Days
REVIEWED BY CHRISTINA LAMB

A HUNDRED AND ONE DAYS: A Baghdad Journal
by Asne Seierstad

Virago £7.99 pp321

I must admit that I started A Hundred and One Days with certain preconceptions. Unless they have some particular expertise or tale to tell, I don’t like foreign correspondents writing books about places just because they have been there. Secondly, The Bookseller of Kabul, the previous book by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad, is an intimate portrayal of an Afghan family I know. The book sold more than a million copies but left its subjects feeling horribly betrayed: Seierstad was described as “the B

PERSONAL: Born 1970, in Lillehammer, Norway; daughter of Dag Seierstad (a political scientist) and Froydis Guldahl (a writer). Education: Attended Oslo University and Moscow University.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Virago Press, Brettenham House, Lancaster Place, London WC2E 7EN, England.

CAREER: Writer, television war correspondent, translator, and journalist.

WRITINGS:

With Their Backs to the Wall: Portraits of Serbia, Virago (London, England), 2000.

Bokhandleren i Kabul: et familiedrama, Cappelen (Oslo, Norway), 2002, translation by Ingrid Christopherson published as The Bookseller of Kabul, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003.

Hundre og én dag: en reportasjereise, Cappelen (Oslo, Norway), 2003, translation by Ingrid Christopherson published as A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal, Virago (London, England), 2004.

Author of translations.

The Bookseller of Kabul has been translated more than two dozen languages.

SIDELIGHTS: Norwegian author Åsne Seierstad is a print and television journalist who is well known throughout her native Norway and the Scandinavian countries. Adept at several languages, including Chinese, Russian, and Spanish, she has been a translator and foreign-language reporter for a variety of Scandinavian newspapers. She has covered the Chechen war, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the fall of Baghdad, and other conflicts in Serbia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

Hundre og én dag: en reportasjereise, published in English translation as A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal in 2004, covers the U.S. invasion of Iraq during the second Gulf War. "Her book focuses far less on the big, dramatic events than on the war's impact on ordinary Iraqis," noted Julie Wheelwright in the London Independent, adding that it portrays "the gut-wrenching tragedy of thousands who were—quite literally—caught in the crossfire." She talks to a grieving grandfather whose grandson was killed in a civilian