A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

Mariam is a harami, an illegitimate child, but she doesn’t understand why she can’t live with her father, his wives, and all her other brothers and sisters. In the innocence of adolescence, Mariam tries to force her way into her father’s family despite her mother’s warnings, and the results are immediate and disastrous. Shortly afterward, Mariam is married off from her rural hometown of Herat to a shoemaker in Kabul, over 650 kilometers away. In Kabul, Mariam learns about modern life, covering herself with a burqa, and the responsibilities and trials of being a woman and a wife. When revolution hits Afghanistan and the government crumbles to chaos, Mariam and her husband, Rasheed, take in the young girl across the street who was orphaned by a stray rocket just as her family was planning to leave Afghanistan. Rasheed makes this new girl, Laila, his second wife, and she also quickly learns what it means to be a wife, woman, and mother. Feeling betrayed by the decision, Mariam keeps a cold distance from Laila, but extraordinary circumstances bring about unusual actions, and Mariam and Laila slowly become friends. Eventually, they join together to fight for friendship, love, and life in their struggle to survive the revolution and an abusive husband.

A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the story of women working together in revolutionary Afghanistan. Overall, the writing is clear and understandable, although Hosseini has a tendency to tell tangents before making a point. There is one chapter in the story that starts off with the women digging a hole in the backyard, and then Hosseini digresses into at least eight other vignettes before he tells us what the hole is for. By the end of the chapter, I almost forgot what he had been talking about. Otherwise, it is straightforward and easy to understand. He doesn’t throw in too much Arabic, and he translates most of what he does put in.

This book has been on my list so long that I couldn’t really tell you what happens in Kite Runner – his other book. I never heard a compelling summary or argument from anyone else as to why I should read it, so it was never a priority book, but I would say it deserves priority status. This story is amazing. In a world where women are so often fighting against each other to get ahead, Hosseini gives us a beautiful, heartbreaking story of two women who find friendship and strength from each other. This book tells the story of disrupted lives coming together, forced to unite amidst chaos, and somehow finding strength to overcome hardship. The story itself is compelling enough, but set against the background of a country caught between competing warlords and the government of the Taliban imposing Shari’a law, it is almost unbelievable that someone could endure (endurance is a key theme in the book) such hardships and still find beauty and meaning to life. Well worth the read.