Lost & Misrepresented Voices of Afghanistan Chapter 1 Page 15

but alas was restricted and condemned as soon as the novel was published. This alas is ironic since the main character was a patriot of literature especially within Afghanistan and spent most of his life rescuing books only to condemn a novel which was ironically written about him and his family. This situation would consequently give the novel a whole new slant and different type of publicity altogether.

Byatt’s text reiterates that novels and stories:

“never live alone; they are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward” (Byatt, 2000, p.125).

This analogy of a story being very much like a ‘branch of a family’ is a rather interesting concept. Nevertheless, a rather accurate one. In Seierstad’s