A Thousand Splendid Suns (Laura Long)

Title of Book:  A Thousand Splendid Suns
Author:  Khaled Hossein
# of Pages:  432
Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 

 Why This Book has Value:

What Khalid Hosseini unveils for Western readers cognizant of Afghan affairs is a dramatic portrayal of life behind a woman’s veil.  The powerful, intergenerational story A Thousand Splendid Suns tells of the intertwined lives of two Afghan women separated by years yet bound by love.  At the start, fifteen-year-old Mariam, an illegitimate harami rejected by her father and abandoned after her mother’s suicide,  is forced to marry Rasheed, a man three times her age with the sole job of bearing him a son. When many years pass with only a series of heartbreaking miscarriages,  Rasheed subsequently manipulates a second marriage to the innocent teenage Laila, who has lost family to a devastating war and whose love for her now-deceased friend  Tariq has left her with her own illegitimate pregnancy, masked by a hasty marriage to Rasheed.  Thus, two women are thrown together through marriage to the same harsh and wildly unpredictable man whose bursts of temper bring turbulence to the home that parallels the violent fighting among Afghan factions and later the harsh, repressive rule of the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The setting alone makes A Thousand Splendid Suns a must-read for Westerners, for through reading we can “visit cultures impossible for us to experience ourselves…to understand what it must have been like to live in a particular time, under certain conditions, in different parts of the world” (Law).  In this book, the political turmoil of the forty-five years from the 1960s to the post-9-11 world brings home the Afghan experience of “one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets” (Hosseini) and later the Taliban dictatorship and the invasion by American and NATO forces.  As the reader sees the Taliban’s restrictions for women through the eyes of the fictional Mariam and Laila, one better understands how the dreaded burqas, restrictions on travel, and lack of access to education even in the capital city so severely limit women’s options.  In the story, the reader sees how Laila and Mariam must bury their television to avoid torturous Taliban sanction and experiences Laila’s brutal pain when she enters a segregated hospital for women that, because of women’s low value, is inadequately supplied.  In this context, the Western reader has greater context for recent American involvement in the region and the significance of young women like Malala Yousafzai, whose defiance of the nearby Pakistani Taliban nearly cost her life.  To understand the relevance of this central Asian region in 2015 requires a look at the experiences of Afghans in recent decades, which, according to the author, is a “tortured recent past [that] became more than mere backdrop…. Afghanistan itself… specifically, Kabul—became a character in this novel” (“Q&A”).

The setting of the novel is inextricably connected to the importance of the subject matter:  the lives of women.  While even Chinese leader Mao Zedong noted that “women hold up half the sky,” relatively few books have offered female protagonists and explored their suffering of life that, like Mariam’s own, “had been unkind to her” (Hosseini).  Certainly some Western novels – The Scarlet Letter, The Red Tent, Anne of Green Gables -- have portrayed women in conflict with their societies, but the Western reader has relatively little exposure to women half a world away who "don't look or talk or act just like ourselves” (Masten qtd in Eldeib) but a world where “each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world … [who] like us suffer” (Hosseini).

Both the setting and the subject matter provide for abundant contrasts and subtle ironies in A Thousand Splendid Suns.  The same raging war that decimates Laila’s liberal, loving, and educated family eventually brings to power men who enforce strict Islamic law.  The passion and enduring commitment to her young love Tariq starkly contrasts the cruel torture she endures while married to Rasheed, a man old enough to be her grandfather.  Likewise, the abusive cruelty of Rasheed in stuffing Mariam’s mouth with rocks because she poorly prepared a rice dinner is counterbalanced by the humanity Laila shows later when she refuses to abort a child conceived with her monstrous husband because she cannot countenance another killing in a city that has known nothing but death for decades.  Moreover, the most motherly act of love is from a harami deemed infertile.  Hosseini recognizes this “perpetual balancing act in writing about the…inner lives of the characters…and … the external world that exerts pressure on the characters and forces their fate” (Hosseini).  These poignant and passionate contrasts grip the reader’s attention.   

These intensely moving contrasts, born of a distinct setting and subject matter, inevitably make an important statement on a universal human idea:  the power of love, whether romantic, motherly, familial, or sisterly love.   Laila, for instance, cannot forget Tariq, and her enduring love for Tariq emboldens her against real threats to her physical safety. Similarly, though Mariam once concludes that “love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion,” it is ultimately  Mariam’s love for Laila that motivates Mariam’s courageous sacrifice as she finally becomes a mother and “a person of consequence at last” in defending and protecting the latter.  Despite the nearly intolerable degree of suffering in this text, the reader is constantly reminded of Hosseini’s explicit statement that “love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism.” This inspirational testament to the power of love speaks profoundly to the soul-weary reader.

In short, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a riveting journey to an unfamiliar place half a world away to discover a life-impacting message about the universality of love’s power that inspires us at home. This enthralling page-turner should be required reading for any educated reader who knows what it means to live and love.

Eldeib, Duaa. "High School Reading: Classics or Contemporary?" Tribunedigital-chicagotribune.    
Chicago Tribune, 07 Mar. 2014. Web. 13 May 2015.

Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. New York: Riverhead, 2007. Print.

Law, Sally. "Classic Works of Literature Still Have a Place in Today's Classrooms." Teacher Network. The Guardian, 11 Dec. 2012. Web. 13 May 2015.

"Q & A." Khaled Hosseini. Khaled Hosseini, n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. <http://khaledhosseini.com/books/a-thousand-splendid-suns/q-a/>.