This book would make an excellent Hindi movie- the story may be set in Afghanistan but every woman in this subcontinent can relate to the suffering of Laila and Mariam. Just as Kite Runner was the story of Afghan men- their bonds of love and honor, this is the tale of women. From 1970s to 2000s coups, invasions and a never-ending civil war keeps wrecking the lives of these women. **In fact almost every 20 pages a major charcter becomes a victim of a bomb, disease or ends up in a refugee camp.
*Hossieni’s brilliance doesnt lay in conceiving a story of an
illegitimate daughter of a housekeeper and the richest man in Herat but
in telling it in a simple manner.** The viewpoint remains that of a
simple child who cannot comprehend the compulsions of social status
and norms. You never feel the weight of the complex tapestry of the
Afghani society he weaves. Characters like Mulla Faizullah, Bibijo may
be caricatures but provide a unique taste to the story. The twists and
turns in Mariam’s life- from forced marriage to miscarriages and
increasingly violent marriage are predictable but thororughly
engaging.
Laila’s social milieu and circumstances are a complete contrast from
Mariam’s. Her father is a liberal and it is her mother who is often
’missing’ from her life. She has proper school education and a circle
of friends. Here Hossieni presents a view of a normal middle class
family- its trials and tribulations and the’extraordinary’ of its
characters. Fate forces Laila and Mariam on a path where they are
initially hostile but then develop a strong bond against the common
oppressor.
This is a tale of women of the subcontinent from the self
imposed exile of Mariam’s mother, Mariam’s forced marriage that even
her beloved father would not stop. Laila marries Rasheed when her other
options are starvation, prostitution and unwed motherhood. Rasheed can
beat the lives out of his wives but they have no right to protest.
Rasheed’s single minded devotion to father a son and hatred for Aziza,
it touches a chord somewhere. Each one of us has seen it happen,
something or the other in some form.
The genius of Hossieni is not only in the vistas he weaves but also as
pictures we can touch, smell and taste and can relate to. More
importantly **the book is written in the style that most storytelling
in Asia is- simple and direct, using simple words to tell a complex
tale and focussing on the heart of the matter while avoiding the
unapalatable.** Violenece, blood and gore are treated matter of
factly.Not once does he take the pulpit to point fingers at the
sociopolitical milieu responsible for such suffering, he leaves the
reader to wince, tear, sigh and paint their own villains. The prose
leaves you so immersed in the stroy that you dont have the time for
’what comes next?’.
Recommendation: Must read
trivia
Khaled Hossieni’s previous novel Kite Runner is considered the first Afghan novel in English
A movie on thousand splendid suns is being planned at the Columbia Studios
It was #3 of the Time’s list of Top 10 Fiction books of 2007.
Hossieni is an Afghan American whose family fled to Paris and then
the US in 1970s. He is a trained doctor who practices internal medicine
5.
Hosseini takes his title from a seventeenth-century poem by
Saib-e-Tabrizi, which sings the praises of the ancient and cultured city
of Kabul: “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or
the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
6.In 2006 he was named a goodwill envoy to
UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.
PS: I recently read Fountainhead and found it tardy, skipping
entire sections of philosophy and architecture but this book hooked me,
it forced me to read it through in a day!