history and literary criticism seem to have taken on many of the rhetorical postures and attitudes of imaginative license which once went with the artfulness of art. (Byatt, 2000, p.99)

Byatt’s sentiment reverberates throughout the novel as a true ideology as we are well aware of the implications that unfortunately Seierstad had to face once the novel was published. Many of us readers and wider public audiences were pleased that another novel would be published giving a true account of Afghanistan through the lens of a female looking in at an authentic Afghanastani family. As Byatt’s quote states, writers become ‘preoccupied with truthfulness and accuracy’ something which I am sure all three writers try their best to adhere too. In my own opinion I believe that Seierstad did in fact do this