A Thousand Splendid Suns
By Khaled Hosseini
Rating 5/5
Genres : War, Fiction, Hope and loss
Wow. This book is just splendid. It had my gut twisted in knots, heart racing with fear and anticipation,hoping after hope that it all ends well for Mariam and Laila who had to go through enormous amounts of domestic abuse and suffer unspeakable losses. While there is always a fierce war going on on the outside, there is an internal war raging within the homes of Afghanistan where women are reduced to slaves and dependants on their tyrannical and sadistic husbands. The author looks at one such family living through the war times in Kabul and how their fates change and alter with the changing times..rules..dictats of the ruling authorities.
The story plot goes thus. Mariam is a girl born in Herat of Afghanistan to an unwed mother. She adores her father but he succumbs to his family pressure and marries her off to a old widower after her mother's death. After many years of her failing to bear him children, she is reduced to the state of a servant receiving constant disdain, criticism and wrathful blows from her husband Rasheed. One day, their neighbor Laila, a teenager becomes an orphan when a rocket bomb blows up her house killing all her family. She is rescued and brought home by Rasheed who taking advantage of her situation forces her into marriage. What only she knows is that she is pregnant with a child conceived from a passionate encounter with her lover Tariq. Tariq has left Afghanistan to Pakistan with his family to escape the war. As time passes and Laila and Miriam form a deeper bond of sisters, Rasheed makes both of them the recipients of his anger..they attempt escape but get caught and are spared their lives barely..Rasheed loses his employment and they become destitute and his resentment is directed towards the weaklings of his household.. After a period of 10 years, Tariq who is thought to have died in the war returns to Laila bringing her the hope of a thousand splendid suns. They make an escape with Rasheed killed, Miriam martyred and a happy future awaiting..
Rasheed literally gave me the goosebumps..I wonder now how hard some lives are. No matter how much hardship we are going through, there is always someone suffering worse. To be a woman in Afghanistan during the period between 1978 and 2001 mentioned in the book is scary and really devoid of any meaning..they are bred for the purposes of household chores, child bearing and to take whatever punishment their sadistic husbands deliver them to. Really sad. I hope the situations have changed as they did towards the end of the book and they have remained that way even now. :)
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