Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
A Thousand Splendid Suns is the story of two women, Mariam and Laila, separated by fifteen years and different family backgrounds, but tied by a common fate of misery and sufferings that their unlikely friendship enables them to face together.
Mariam is a harimi, a bastard born from a wealthy father and one of his maids. She lives in a small shack on a hill above the town of Herat with her mother, and waits impatiently for her father’s weekly visits until she realizes that he puts his reputation before his own daughter. The same day her father disappoints her so bitterly, she also loses her mother. Soon, although she is only 15, she is given as a wife to a middle-aged shoemaker from Kabul named Rasheed.
Laila, a daughter of one of Mariam’s neighbors, lives a sheltered childhood. Although her mother is too busy worrying about her sons who left to fight the jihad against the soviets to take care of her, she has a loving father who encourages her scholarly pursuits, and a childhood friend, Tariq, whom she falls in love with. But as the soviets are chased from the country and war rages between rival Mujahideen warlords, her fate is about to change and join Mariam’s unhappy one…
A Thousand Spendid Suns is a story of courage and survival, telling how two women, because of their friendship, manage to survive unimaginable hardships. Nothing has been spared to this country and to its inhabitants in the last 40 years: bombings, shootings, executions and poverty threatened everyone. As time passed and the Talibans took control of the country, things became even worse, mostly for women who were, overnight, forbidden to work, to be educated, or even to walk the streets unaccompanied by a man. Laila and Mariam’s ordeal is rendered even more unbearable by Rasheed’s suspicious and brutal personality…
Like The Kite Runner, this novel is a story of survival, of resilience against the blows dealt by fate, of friendship, but also of forgiveness and redemption. The plot is rather straightforward, without the sometimes unlikely twists found in The Kite Runner. The change of pace and the simpler plot makes this novel less of a page-turner than its predecessor but instead it gains in sobriety and poignancy. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a beautifully written novel, recommended for whoever is interested the fate of Afghan women…
Rating: 4/5
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Tu pourras me prêter les deux livres de Khaled Hosseini, merci!!