A Thousand Splendid Suns
August 20th 2007 00:28
Image: khaledhosseini.com
This time Hosseini explores the feminine world, following the lives of Mariam and Laila, two women caught in the vicious turmoil of life under the Taliban. It is hard to say which woman has it harder. Mariam, born out of wedlock and forced into a marriage, had always been told by her mother that she was nothing … worthless, and in a man’s world would always suffer. Mariam soon found all this to be true.
But Laila was adored and encouraged by her father to pursue knowledge and success in her life. Something she had been made to believe was possible. Then the Taliban came into power and with her family destroyed by war and political infighting, Laila had to face the reality of male dominated suppression.
Which of them found it easier?
Well, of course you have to read the book and decide for yourself, and although it gets a little soap-operaish at times, I would still recommend it.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story-driven novel that has you eating up the pages at lightning speed and the situations these women find themselves in would strike a chord with any female, in any society. But because of this, I think the character development suffers a little. They come across one dimensional compared to those in his first novel. This could also be due to the author being a male. What do you think? I have read many books with female characters developed by a male writer, and sometimes it works (eg. Larry McMurtry’s Aurora Greenway, Terms of Endearment), but Hosseini’s women are lacking a certain depth of anger and injustice that any woman would feel in such circumstances.
There is no doubt that the plight of Afghanistan under the Taliban is a popular and topical subject with the novel reading public. As with The Kite Runner, readers will gobble this up, but Hosseini definitely has another agenda. That being western support for Afghanistan. I have no problem with this and you can read more on his website – what is most disturbing to me is that somewhere out there the Taliban is finding support – otherwise they would not be re-surfacing.
I’d like to start a discussion on any of these points – let me know what you think.
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