A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

From John M. Formy-Duval, for About.com

The Kite Runner was a runaway best seller and critical success. Khaled Hosseini drew huge, enthusiastic crowds as he toured the nation talking about the biographical aspects of this remarkable novel. It was clearly one of the best novels I read in 2005. And, his talk to the Chatham County, North Carolina community was one of the best author talks I heard that year. His novel was selected by nearly 40 communities as their book. As good as that novel was, A Thousand Splendid Suns may be better. Will it, however, become the same publishing phenomenon? Will it become the centerpiece of community reads?

It has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Booklist. All the praise is well-deserved. The story is straightforward, the writing beautiful in its simplicity and use of well-chosen metaphors. It draws the reader into the lives of its characters.

The history of Afghanistan is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And, yet, Laila sees that people find a way to survive, to go on. Ultimately, this is more than a story of survival in the face of what seem to be insurmountable odds. It is a story of the unconquerable spirit of a people and individuals seen through the eyes of two indomitable women. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a must read for those who wish to understand the modern history (1964 - 2003) of Afghanistan, which is told eloquently through the eyes of Laila and Mariam.

Life is an unending search for love, family, home, acceptance, a healthy society, and a promising future. You can go home again, even if "home" has evolved and been transformed. As home is transformed one adapts and maintains what one can of tradition. The dying words of Laila's father, killed by a bomb while in the seeming safety of their home, quote lines from a 17th Century poem by Saib-e-Tabrizi in praise of Kabul: "One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls."

A Thousand Splendid Suns is not so clearly autobiographical as The Kite Runner; however, one cannot help but imagine that these two remarkable women are drawn from life, that their revealed lives reflect the lives of thousands of Afghani women who have endured despite the odds. Hosseini has said, "I would like readers to walk away with a sense of empathy for Afghans, and more specifically for Afghan women, on whom the effects of war and extremism have been devastating." Both novels, he says, were love stories. Whereas The Kite Runner featured fraternal love, A Thousand Splendid Suns shows how "love manifests itself in even more various shapes, be it romantic love, . . . or love for family, home, country, God. I think. . . it is ultimately love that draws characters out of their isolation, that gives them the strength to transcend their own limitations, to expose their vulnerabilities, and to perform devastating acts of self-sacrifice."

The stories of Mariam and Laila begin independent of one another even as they live a few doors apart in Kabul. When a bomb falls on Laila's home, killing her parents, she is taken in by Mariam and her husband Rasheed, one of the most evil incarnate characters in the modern novel. Mariam was married to him when she was fifteen. Laila is nearly the same age and Rasheed is in lust toward her, pushing aside Mariam. It is difficult to accept that some of what Westerners perceive as "evil" is Rasheed acting consistently in accordance with centuries old Afghani tradition.

The descriptions of the ensuing violence (some physical, but most often mental) visited upon Laila and Mariam as individuals and the people of Afghanistan are presented in a straightforward manner and are all the more horrific for the nearly clinical depiction. In the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, the Mujahideen were bad, but peaceful in comparison with the rise of the Taliban who did all they could to kill the centuries old culture of Afghanistan. The systematic destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan is a case in point as the Taliban instituted draconian religious laws. The attitude of the Taliban toward women, as Mariam says, "Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always."

Yet, amid the worst of the excesses, 2000 was the year of "Titanic." People surreptitiously watched the video in their homes with quilts tacked over windows for secrecy. Vendors sold all things "Titanic": cloth, deodorant, toothpaste, perfume - even burkas. "Every wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead." Such is a metaphor for life under the Taliban.

Hosseini has an unerring ear for just the right phrase, the exact descriptive words to evoke both the reality and the deeper meaning of a particular scene. Consider this one horrific example as Laila endures a Cesarean section in a Taliban hospital without anesthetic:

(The female doctor) bent over Laila. Laila's eyes snapped open. Then her mouth opened. She held like this, held, shivering, the cords in her neck stretched, sweat dripping from her face, her fingers crushing Mariam's. Mariam would always admire Laila for how much time passed before she screamed.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1965, the son of a diplomat father and a mother who taught Farsi and history in high school. Granted political asylum, they moved to California in 1980 where they lived on food stamps for a short while. Hosseini earned his medical degree and began practicing internal medicine in 1996. He published The Kite Runner in 2003 to great acclaim. In 2006 Dr. Hosseini was named a U.S. envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/1000suns.htm