Tuesday, August 23, 2005

The entrepreneur of Kabul

Bookseller of KabulI just finished reading Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul, which turns out to be an Entrepreneur as Hero [tm] book -- or maybe Entrepreneur as anti-hero. The book is centered around Sultan Khan, bookseller, and pulls no punches about what American entrepreneurs will probably see as moral lapses underlying Khan's business:
  • Though he is permitted as head of the family to take a second wife, when he does it does not make his family happier.
  • He trusts only relatives to work for him in his bookstore, blasting the prospects of his sons and nephews for an education.
  • He does not account for intellectual property, nor does anyone else in Afghanistan, as he prints and binds the words of others for sale in his shop.
  • Although by American standards, Khan is stealing the works of others for sale, may Allah help you if you shoplift from him. For taking a handful of postcards from Khan (the photos copied by Khan, again, without attribution), a local carpenter was sent to jail and away from his starving family.
You could argue that Sultan Khan is just doing what he has to to scrape a modest existence out of the dust of Kabul, and maybe that's what people have to do in a place like Afghanistan, which has known no peace in several decades.

I would be interested in knowing what entrepreneurial ventures would really stand a chance of success in dusty Kabul. Seierstad's book, which is really a fine read, doesn't give me any ideas.

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posted by Ron @ 8:40 PM

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