A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Book Review

It is not a surprise that ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is such a huge bestseller, like its predecessor ‘The Kite Runner‘. In ‘The Kite Runner’, the main character spends his life regretting an act of cowardice and betrayal he committed when he was younger. It gave the readers a look at Afghanistan and the difficulty of life there, as well as the auther’s accessible story-telling talents. Like ‘The Kite Runner’, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ has a very barbarous antagonist and a virtuous friend who commits an enormous amount of sacrifice to help out the hero/heroine. It shows the fallout Afghanistan’s violent history had on a handful of individuals, where one character ends in death at the hands of the Taliban, and a new life for the other character.’The Kite Runner’ is about fathers and sons, friendship between men. On the other hand, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is about mothers and daughters, friendship between women. ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ shows the struggle of women living in Afghanistan. It gains speed and power as the story unfolds. 

In the story, Mariam is an illegitimate child born to a bad-tempered mother and an ashamed father. Her mother worked as a housekeeper at her father’s place, where her father lived with his three wives and children. Mariam and her mother lived in a makeshift house away from her father’s place. Mariam grows up adoring her father, until she pushes too far for his affection and realises there are lines that he will not cross. Her mother lays out the book’s theme, “Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.” That holds true as the story shifts to Laila, a younger girl from Kabul, with an intellectual father, a depressed mother, and a crush on her friend, who lost one of his legs to a land mine in childhood. Through Laila’s and Mariam’s eyes, Hosseini explains Afghanistan’s changing system over the decades: the Soviets, the Mujahideen, the Taliban, the American bombings. Hosseini keeps the focus on how all of these shiftings changes the lives of these women.

In the end, you are not only on the verge of tears, but there’s also a flame sparking from within.

Columbia Pictures owns the movie rights to this movie.

My opinions

An amazing, heart-touching book. Can’t say enough about it. It has awesome vocabulary too, so if you want to broaden your vocabulary knowledge, this book is great. I think any person over 10 years of age would thoroughly enjoy this book. This book is just as good as Hosseini’s other books, The Kite Runner and And The Mountains Echoed.

Genre

• Fiction
• Drama

My favourite character

My favourite character would obviously be Mariam because her whole life was a struggle, but she was still a good person at heart, and did as much as she could for Laila and her children, even if that meant she had to keep her life at stake.