Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

chillibreeze writer — Bhuvana Venkatesh

A tale of love, loss and hope in Kabul, a land of “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan American, launched his literary career with the phenomenally successful novel The Kite Runner, a tale of childhood friendship ripped asunder by betrayal, loss, and eventual redemption, set in Afghanistan – a country that is in the news for a lot of reasons, but does not really figure in most people’s mental map, especially as a literary power. While the book was extremely well received by the reading public and has been turned into a major motion picture by Paramount, Hussein has strived to enhance his literary appeal with his second novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, weaving a dark tale of two women living through personal and national turbulence.

This novel covers periods from the 1970s when Afghanistan was ruled by a king, to the Soviet infringement and mujahideen resistance, to the rise and “fall” of the Taliban, drawing an emotional picture of the recent painful decades of life in Afghanistan. The horrors and terrors of that period are described with broad strokes and form the background for the tale of the lives of two women – Mariam and Laila, who are caught in a loveless marriage and are shadowed by the political turmoil of their country.

Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman and a member of his household staff. Mother and daughter are forced to live far apart from the main family in a small house and eke out a hard existence. The mother is not quite emotionally stable and Mariam lives for Thursdays, the day her father comes visiting with small gifts – she treasures the moments when he is attentive to her. When she expresses her desire for a more socially visible relationship, she is rebuked and suffers the pain of rejection. Circumstances including the suicide of her mother, force her, at 15, to marry 40-year-old Rasheed, a shoemaker, who proves to be a violent man, especially as the years pass by and she fails to bear him a child. "There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten” – this sentence states the plight of women in such patriarchal societies where they are initially dependent on their fathers, husbands and in later years, their sons, for their every need and where such treatment is a way of life and not seen as a violent crime against women.

Laila is Mariam’s neighbor’s daughter, a pretty girl. Her mother always hopes that her two sons fighting in the war would return home soon. Laila’s playmate is Tariq with whom she shares her confidences. However, when the jihad ends and the internal struggles between the different mujahideen factions lead to a recurrence of bombings and firing, Tariq and Laila are separated. With the death of her parents, Laila, through force of circumstances, is married to Rasheed.

Two women, a generation apart, married to the same vile man – they work their way through an uneasy relationship to eventually evolve into support systems for each other against the cruel Rasheed. They suffer through his sadistic ploys, the hard life in a war torn country, enduring their lot in life, "the lot of poor, uneducated women like us.” Laila and Mariam bear their suffering well, drawing on their inborn strength and from each other’s presence and compassion. So while the background, setting and tale reeks of despair, it is strung with a delicate thread of hope, fragile as it were.

Laila gives birth to a baby girl which again sets Rasheed, who is desperate for a male offspring, on the path of sadistic violence. The women who seem to have reached their threshold of pain attempt to flee, but are caught and forced to undergo more torture. As the years go by, Mariam delivers the much cherished male heir – this however does not change Rasheed’s ill treatment of the women.

As living conditions worsen due to the Taliban’s repressive dictates, Laila’s little girl is sent to an orphanage and Rasheed is forced to toil in menial jobs. The turning point arrives in the form of Tariq who returns to Kabul and resumes his relationship with Laila. When Rasheed learns of this “act”, he mercilessly beats Laila. Mariam is so horrified by the brutality that she is driven to kill Rasheed with a shovel.

While Mariam is executed for the murder of her husband, Laila along with Tariq rescues her daughter from the orphanage and taking Mariam’s son along, leaves for Pakistan. They return years later following the fall of the Taliban to Kabul, and work towards restoring the orphanage.

The title of the book is drawn from Saib-e-Tabrizi’s poem about Kabul, a city that left a deep impact on the poet. Hosseini employs this line to also record his ties to his native land through a character that yearns for the land that he is fleeing. Hosseini’s storytelling style is simple yet paints word-pictures that are descriptive. His characters that are well fleshed out, the events appear dramatic and yet are so plausible in that milieu, the themes of despair, love, rage, violence, resilience and endurance that are universal – reach out to the readers who are drawn to the lives of the main characters. His engaging prose draws the readers into a world that the Western world may know little about but frequently condemns. In so many ways, the world he paints – the ugliness of war, the toll it takes on family pining for news on the fate of loved ones, grieving for lost lives, the utter impotence of women to take charge of their lives, the bigotry of men, the archaic and impractical customs and tenets of culture and religion (brought back with renewed force and misguided intent by the Taliban) – does not seem exclusive to Afghan society. It finds its echo in varying forms, in differing degrees, through the different time periods, across the world. It is this thread of universality and simplicity that engages the reader up to the very end.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Published by Riverhead.

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—About our writer:

Bhuvana,

Typical Libran. Passionate about books and travel. The written word is my lifeblood and am one of the lucky few to enjoy my passion as a paying proposition. Live vicariously through travelogues and hope to earn enough to visit every corner of this wondrous world.

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

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