A Thousand Splendid Suns

This book by Khalad Hosseini is more a potted history of Afghanistan, than a novel; it’s a member of the “life sucks for women” book club, and the “life sucks for people in non-Western countries” book club, too. Mariam is the unwanted daughter of a rich man and his housekeeper; she’s married off against her will at fifteen to Rasheed, is beaten by him, and miscarries every child. Laila, who has had a liberal upbringing, gets pregnant at fourteen to her childhood love Tariq, who goes to Pakistan just before her parents are blown up by a bomb. So she ends up quickly marrying Rasheed, having her lover’s daughter, and then a son by Rasheed. A close friendship develops between Mariam and Laila, and Mariam ends up giving up her life so Laila can have the freedom she never knew.

It’s a fast-paced novel, without much complexity. The details are interesting to me – many of the Farsi words are so close or the same as the Kurdish ones, and they also have the Titanic craze back in 1999 which swept Bangladesh and India. But in general it’s more a way of covering a lot of history through the lives of some poor suffering women. At least it has a happy ending, although I think the hopefulness of the little family at the end at the future of the new Afghanistan may be slightly misplaced – but then, hope is all they have.