Life > February 7, 2008

By Ryanne Wicker | Contributing writer

It was with much excitement that I picked up a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns at the University Bookstore last week. This is the second novel by Afghani author Khaled Hosseini, whose first novel, The Kite Runner, was an international bestseller.

click to enlarge

Having been captivated by The Kite Runner, I promptly disregarded my very lengthy to-do list and began reading.

Within pages it was clear to me that Hosseini has matched, if not surpassed, the quality of his first novel. I found myself unable to put the book down, and I was completely drawn in to the complex and captivating story that Hosseini weaves throughout the book.

A Thousand Splendid Suns depicts the story of two women, Mariam and Laila, living in Afghanistan during the recent decades of political and social turmoil.

Through a tragic series of events, they find themselves thrown together in a struggle to maintain their identities under a regime that treats women as property.

The novel follows the women through their childhoods and then into adult lives as the wives of the same abusive husband.

With the war-torn city of Kabul as a background, Hosseini illustrates the vast number of ways in which life changes for Mariam and Laila as control of Afghanistan passes from one violent political group to another. Hosseini’s portrayal of the oppression of women through this novel is not as explicit as the graphic details used to describe the abuse that occurs in The Kite Runner. In the end, it is not the description of the abuse Mariam and Laila suffer that makes the heaviest impact. Instead it is the strength of their friendship with each other, grief for lost families, love for children and above all else, their conviction to be something greater than just two more women hidden behind heavy burkas that speaks to the reader from every page of the novel. By the end of novel, Hosseini brings his characters full circle in a way that proves the strength of their convictions and their ability to outlast even the most tumultuous of times.

During a time when it seems that the only stories coming out of the Middle East are those of fear and death, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a valuable window into a world that is far too often misunderstood.

Hosseini’s rich description of Afghani culture presents both the good and the evil, but more importantly it emphasizes that the culture exists. Beneath the war and suffering in the Middle East that dominates the nightly news in the western world, there are people.

There are people who love, who grieve, who laugh, who fear but, most importantly, people who hope.

Hosseini’s message is one that every member of the global community should be exposed to: We are far more alike than we are different.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is more than just a captivating page-turner, though it is that certainly. It is a work of fiction, but the events that take place provide a window into the world that many Afghani women face every day.

By the time readers close the back cover, they have been exposed to a level of knowledge about Afghanistan and its people that cannot be expressed in a 60-second television report. This novel has earned a well-deserved place on my list of favorites and I would strongly recommend it to anyone looking for the lives behind the news stories.