As a follow up to his very widely read book, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini provides us with a book that I hope many, many women will read: A Thousand Splendid Suns.

I am probably one of the few people who did not enjoy The Kite Runner. I honestly could not even get past the first dozen pages. This is no reflection on Mr. Hosseini's writing; it was just not a book for me. Because of this, I make no comparisons between Mr. Hosseini's first and second books. I can only judge A Thousand Splendid Suns on its own merit – and it is indeed a meritorious book.

A true storyteller, Mr. Hosseini's phrases create pictures in one's mind, sometimes painfully inhuman pictures. The story reads like the passing of the sun through the sky – natural and unhurried.

A Thousand Splendid Suns spans a period of 30 years and we are brought effortlessly by the author into the realm of a woman's life in Afghanistan, to experience the limitations and freedoms that come and go with the political regimes that rule the country.

We first meet Mariam, a plucky little girl with an unfortunate circumstance – she was born out of wedlock and into the life of a recluse because of her status. As we join her in her childhood, she comes alive before our eyes as the landscape of Afghanistan materializes around her and we come to understand what it truly means to be a young girl in this country.

We see Mariam as a chatty youngster full of hopes and dreams despite her situation and we watch as she blossoms into a young woman with limited choices. By her late twenties she has achieved in life the most a woman can hope for in her situation, a decent marriage. If decent means that she is beaten every now and again, well, that is just how life is. There is food on the table and a roof over her head. Life is good – or it is a good as she could expect it to be. As her mother taught her, a woman will endure.

Next we meet Laila, born later than Mariam into better circumstances, but her happy childhood quickly turns into a bleak future. Her life is forever altered by violence and death like that of so many other young women of her time and place. The love of her life disappears as he flees the violence, and she is left behind to manage on her own. Laila also endures a marriage of violence and unhappiness, but there is no other path for women like her so she too endures.

Through years of events, we get to know Laila and Mariam as they get to know each other. They are strong women with a love of life, women you'd want to have a cup of tea with just to have a chat, but they have very little control of their futures or that of their children. As the details of their lives are revealed to us, so we also experience the lives of many women in Afghanistan.

A Thousand Splendid Suns deserves every one of the ten quills I've given it. It is a beautifully written story dealing with such unreal circumstances that most readers will think, or perhaps hope, that the story is pure fiction set in an unreal universe.

It is the realization that this is not an isolated case that makes A Thousand Splendid Suns all the more powerful. Those of us who read the book should remember that we have sisters everywhere in this world who are less fortunate than ourselves and that we have a lot to be thankful for.
 
Reviewed By Sabine Maurier
© September 2007