Kabul book-seller wants to spur reading habit

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - Shah Muhammad Rais is the biggest book-seller in Afghanistan, but while business is good, he still has another mission in mind: to get his countrymen interested in reading again.

Having failed to reach all the far-flung corners of war-torn Afghanistan with a mobile book shop on a bus, the 54-year-old Rais has now launched a Web site (www.shahmbookco.com) to reach those who have access to the Internet and order books on-line.

He claims to have the world's largest collection of books on Afghanistan in key international languages.

"I would say they are unique," Rais said in his store in the heart of Kabul as his staff dusted off a pile of books, part of the nearly 1 million he owns.

"With regret and unfortunately, I have to say that I am the main book-seller in Afghanistan. There will be a crisis of books if something happens to us or if we collapse. So, it is very important that we have others involved in this too," he said.

Rais, who has an engineering degree, has been involved in the book trade for 35 years and is well known to many expatriates in Kabul as well as Afghan book lovers.

A visiting Norwegian journalist wrote a book about Rais months after the Taliban's fall in 2001.

"The Bookseller of Kabul", portraying Rais as tough and brutal with his family, became a worldwide hit with sales of more than a million copies.