A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I’ll start right off with the good news: This book is one of the best I have read this year and ranks high among the best books I ever read. A Thousand Splendid Sunsknocked me off my feet. While reading the book, I saw the story in my head. I imagined what the street looked like where Laila and Mariam lived, I saw the houses they lived in. When that happens, when I imagine the story in my head, for me that is a sign of a very good book. Khaled Hosseini is an incredible storyteller and I found him very credible telling the story from the perspective of the female characters. I started reading the book at ten in the morning, finishing it at midnight the same day. I could not put the book down, wanting to know what happened next. When I finished the book, I felt like I had said goodbye to people who had become very close in a way.

The book starts with Mariam, who in the early 1970s is leading a solitary life with her mother outside the city of Herat in Afghanistan. She was born out of wedlock, her father being one of the wealthiest men in Herat, her mother at that time working as a maid in his household. Mariam’s father visits her every week, linking her with a strange and exciting world and bringing promises of luxuries that Mariam can only dream of, like a visit to a movie theater. When Mariam’s mother commits suicide, her father marries Mariam off to Rasheed, a friend of a business associate from Kabul. Mariam is only fifteen at the time, Rasheed some thirty years older.

In her new life as Rasheed’s wife, Mariam finds out that life is nowhere near as fairytale-like as her father made her belief during his weekly visits. Rasheed will not let Mariam out of the house without her wearing a burqa. Far worse, he turns out to be very violent, beating Mariam up regularly.

Then the focus in the book shifts to Laila, a nine year old girl living on the same street as Mariam and Rasheed. The year is now 1987, the army of the Soviet Union has been fighting in Afghanistan since 1979. Laila grows up in a very different environment from Mariam, with a father who encourages women’s education and women’s participation in Afghan society. Wherever Laila is, her best friend Tariq is as well. He is two years older than her and as the two grow older their friendship turns into love.

In 1992, the Soviets having left the country some three years earlier, Afghanistan is now the scene of a civil war, different ethnic groups and warlords fighting each other. Violence and fighting have arrived in the neighborhood of Laila, Mariam and Tariq as well. People are fleeing the country, and Tariq’s parents decide to flee to Pakistan as well. Taliq wants to marry Laila and take her with them, but she refuses. She does not want to abandon her parents. Shortly after Tariq has left, Laila’s parents die when a rocket hits their house. Laila survives, but is severely wounded.

She is taken in and cared after by Mariam and Rasheed, who eventually takes her as his second wife, after Laila found out that Tariq and his parents were killed on their way to Pakistan. Laila is only fourteen at that time. You can imagine how her life changes: she grew up free, valued and loved by her parents, a father who encouraged her and wanted her to go to university and do great things in life; now she becomes the wife of a man for whom women are only good to bear children, cook and clean the house and who thinks nothing of beating up his wives. After a rocky start and despite their age difference, a friendship develops between Mariam and Laila and the two women form a team trying to survive.

Despite the difficult lives of Mariam and Laila (and of Afghan women in general), the ending is one of hope. Hope for Afghanistan and hope for its children. Some might argue that the ending is too much a “happy ending”, but I felt that it couldn’t be much different as otherwise the book would be too gloomy and hopeless.

The strength of the two women is amazing. I grew to have so much respect for them and for the difficult decisions they had to take. Mariam who had never really learned or had the chance to take charge of her own life and who early on learned not to expect anything from life, Laila who at fourteen has to adjust to a completely new life in order to survive.

When everyone was going wild over The Kite Runner, Hosseini’s fist novel, I felt like “yeah, whatever”. I tend to be rather allergic to books that everyone is raving about and that are topping the bestseller lists. I prefer to go my own way. When I pick up a bestseller, it is because I am interested in it, not because it is a bestseller and everybody is reading it. After having read A Thousand Splendid Suns I will definitely go and find Hosseini’s first novel The Kite Runner now as well.