“A book is alive with discussions like this; the writer is just half the book,” exclaimed award winning Norwegian journalist and writer Åsne Seierstad as heated discussions around her latest book Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad came to and end during a small event organized by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Cairo earlier this week. Having worked extensively as a reporter in various war-torn countries across the world, Seierstad is no stranger to getting herself right in the middle of ‘all the action’. After having graduated from the University of Oslo with degrees in Russian, Spanish and Philosophy, Seierstad immediately went into journalism, working as a reporter in countries such as Russia and China. From 1998 to 2000, she reported from the Serbian breakaway province of Kosovo, which resulted in her first book With their Backs to the World: Portraits of Serbia, in which she recounts that which took place during this turbulent political time in Serbian history in a rather more personal manner – from the perspectives of the citizens who were in the middle of it all. The book that really placed…
