I received a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns as a birthday present. I was anxious to read it, as, although I found the book very depressing, I thought that The Kite Runner was a good read.
The story focuses on two women: Mariam and Laila. The former is an illegitimate child who is forced by her father to marry a man she does not know following the death of her mother. The latter is an orphan whose parents have been killed in a civil war in Afghanistan in 1979. The two women's stories become intertwined when Rasheed, Mariam's husband, takes Laila in. He later tricks Laila into marrying him. Not only must Mariam and Laila deal with Rasheed's emotional and physical abuse, they must also adhere to the Taliban's brutal regulations on women.
I very much enjoyed Hosseini's description of the landscape in his book. I also liked how each chapter in Part 3 was told from the perspective of either Mariam or Laila. I would recommend this book.
Although, like The Kite Runner, the story does have many disturbing moments, I found the story much more uplifting. The book does a good job of exposing many of the tragedies and hardships that the Afghan people have had to endure over the past 30 years and that despite these hardships, the Afghan people are working hard to rebuild.
1 comment:
Glad you liked it. I would agree that although it was still startlingly depressing at times, unlike The Kite Runner, I didn't want to go and commit suicide afterwards. I also find that I learn more about Afghani culture through Hosseini than any other medium.
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