Library & Literary Miscellany

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (2007)

*some spoilers follow

Nana said, “Learn this and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

In his first novel following the success of the The Kite Runner, Hosseini once again brings readers into Afghanistan. Whereas The Kite Runner focuses on telling the story of boys and men, A Thousand Splendid Suns portrays the lives of two Afghan women. Hosseini relates Miriam and Lila’s stories as women in Afghanistan during a time when their country devalued and disrespected women’s rights and provided them with restricted power of choice in the events of their own lives.

“Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami…Mariam did surmise, by the way Nana said the word, that it was an ugly, loathsome thing to be a harami, like an insect, like the scurrying cockroaches Nana was always cursing and sweeping out of the kolba.” Mariam’s classification as a harami positions her to be rejected by respectable members of Afghan society. Accordingly, following Nana’s death, Miriam has little choice but to accept the marriage proposal of Rasheed, a man who turns out to value his wives only for what they can give him–progeny. When it turns out that Miriam cannot, in fact, give him this desire, he turns the full force of his cruelty and abuse upon her.

The parallel story is that of Laila whose circumstances also conspire to force her into marriage with Rasheed–Laila’s parents have been killed, and she is pregnant by a man whom she loves but believes to be dead. Laila marries Rasheed, and, for a time, Laila and Mariam are the bitterest of enemies until they become the best of friends.

The story shifts back and forth between the perspectives of these two women as together they endure in their country perpetual war under different rulers with different level of tolerance of women–Soviets, the mujahideen, the Taliban. Together they endure in their home life perpetual fear, powerlessness, and abuse. Because they are together, they also help each other to hope for a better future for Laila’s children. When Taliq (Laila’s childhood love) returns, the far-off promise of hope draws near to reality.

A Thousand Splendid Suns reveals the lives of two women whose courage, resilience, and love keeps them going and makes them memorable characters; it also shows the interconnections between sacrifice and redemption, situation and choice, and power and powerlessness. For other books that are set in and around Afghanistan try:

Non-fiction:

• Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
• The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
• The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan by Christina Lamb
• Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
• Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan by Ann Jones
• Behind the Burqa: Our Life in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom by Sulima and Hala and Batya Swift Yasgur

Fiction:

• Measuring Time by Helon Habila
• The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
• The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
• The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra
• Under the Persimmon Tree by Suzanne Fisher Staples (young adult)

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