A Thousand Splendid Suns

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by Khaled Hosseini
This is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years – from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding – that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives – the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness – are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

The book I read is called ‘A thousand splendid suns’, and it was written by Khaled Hosseini. It is set in Afghanistan from the 1960’s, to 1990’s, during the Soviet occupation. It follows the life of women who live in a country torn apart by war, and the battles they went through in their early lives, and marriages. The first is a girl named Mariam. She was nine in the beginning of the book. She was seen as a harami, and an illegitimate child. Even as a child, she went through a lot of problems of not feeling like she belonged anywhere, and that she was out of place. Her wealthy father did not want her, and neither did her mother. After her mother committed suicide, Mariam was forced to marry a man more than twice her age at the tender age of 15. Her husband Rasheed, was seen as a kind man, and he had a sorrowful childhood similar to Mariam’s. At first, her marriage did not look as bad, until she started getting many miscarriages, and her husband started to abuse her. The second woman is called Laila. She lost her parents, and had a very sad childhood because no one really loved her. When Rasheed asked her to marry him, she accepted, hoping he would love her. As the book progresses, Mariam, and Laila built a sort of mother- daughter type of relationship, even though they were both married to the same man. Eventually, Mariam sacrificed her life for Laila, and to honor Mariam, Laila dedicated her life to the children of Kabul, using Mariam’s inheritance.  At the end of the book, Laila was pregnant with a child. A significant moment at the end of the book was when Laila was looking for baby names, and she only looked for boy names because she knew that if she had a girl, she would name her Mariam.
By Angel Mailu