Book Review/A Thousand Splendid Suns
Book Review
A Thousand Splendid Suns
By Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead Books
A division of Penguin Group
Hardcover $25.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
This may not be proper for a book reviewer, but I feel I must give a warning to for my readers about this book. It is a disturbing story about the plight of women in Afghanistan. It is by no means political in today’s scheme of things.
It is the story of two women, Mariam and Laila, both young and forced into an arranged marriage with an elderly shoemaker named Rasheed.
The story begins when Mariam at age 5 learns she is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Afghanistan man named Jalil Khan, who has multiple wives and many other children. While he will not recognize her as a daughter, he often visits her and brings her presents. She longs to be with him and one day sets out to find Jalil certain that he would be pleased to see her. She is turned away and when she returns home discovers her mother has hanged herself thinking that Mariam has abandoned her.
Jalil takes her in, but her life is miserable because the three wives will not accept her. They plot to arrange a marriage with Rasheed and send her into that marriage when she is only 15. At first, Rasheed treats her with gentleness, but requires her to wear a burqa, the garment some Islamic women wear to completely cover their bodies. In the beginning she feels imprisoned by the garment, but eventually finds comfort in the anonymity it gives her. It is a happy arrangement until she has her first child by Rasheed, is still born. He is upset and shuns her for not delivering a son. He brings home a much younger, second wife, Laila, who unbeknown to him is pregnant with another man’s child. She delivers a son but longs to reunite with the real father of her son. Rasheed loses his business when a new regime takes over in Afghanistan and becomes abusive toward the two wives. Lalia is secretly stealing money from Rasheed in hopes of escaping, but women cannot purchase bus tickets in Afghanistan and she enlists the aid of a man to buy her the ticket. He betrays her and Rasheed is informed. He brutally beats her and is strangling Lalia when Mariam kills him and convinces Laila to flee and take both children. Mariam takes the blame for the death and is eventually executed.
It is a very vivid story of life in Afghanistan written authentically by Hosseini, whose debut novel, "The Kite Runner," is about two boys growing up in Kabul and torn apart by war. Afghani-born Hosseni was 11 years old and living in Paris, France where his father was a diplomat with the Afghan embassy when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979. His family received political asylum in the United States.
Hosseini studied medicine and today is an internist in northern California. "I wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history," he said in an interview, saying that most Americans think Afghanistan is synonymous with the Soviet invasion and the Taliban. "I wanted to remind people that Afghans had managed to live in peaceful anonymity for decades."
His first novel, "The Kite Runner" published in 2002 is entirely different, but it sets the stage for his 2007 book, "A Thousand Splendid Suns," a title that comes from a 17th Century poem that is an ode to Kabul.
Even though he has gained unexpected fame as a writer, Hosseini still keeps his day job as a doctor and arises at 4 a.m. to write two to three hours before leaving home for his medical practice. The result is two best selling books in six years.
"A Thousand Splendid Suns," is a powerful, if tragic, tale vividly telling the seemingly hopelessness of women in Afghanistan.
(Bill Duncan is the editor of The Senior Times. He also writes a weekly column on the Opinion Page of The News-Review every Thursday.)