A Thousand Splendid Suns

Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Author : Khaled Hosseini

Published: 2007

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 4 out of 5

After hearing all the great things about Khaled Hosseini, and being unable to complete 'The Kite Runner', I was able to read 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' at last. The book about love, hate, sacrifice, compromise, revenge, and the rebound has been wonderfully written.

This is a story about two women in Afghanistan, who are married to the same man. The story starts with Mariam, who is 'haraami', an illegitimate daughter to a wealthy man in Herat. Her life as a child and wanting to be with her father makes her leave her home and makes her change her mind when she sees the reality. Laila, another main character in the book, is a daughter of a professor who believes in women's empowerment. Laila has two brothers who become martyrs in the Afghan-Russian war. She is in love with her friend Tariq, who has lost a leg to a landmine. Both Mariam and Laila end up marrying Rasheed, who is a shoe merchant and believes in Taliban rules.

The book illustrates Afghanistan's struggle through the political changes and brutality of a male-dominated society. The life in the refugee camps in Pakistan, the daily struggles of Afghan people make the reader wonder about the living conditions in a war-torn country. 

Favorite lines from the book :

• Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man's finger always finds a woman. always. You remember that Mariam.
• A man's heart is wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed, it won't stretch to make room for you.
• He told her of the superstitions people had about shoes: that putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put on the left shoe first. "And did you know it is supposed to be a bad omen to tie shoes together and hang them from a nail?"
• Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated Laila. No chance.
• And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.
• This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.
• "I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.

The Kite Runner

Title: The Kite Runner Author: Khaled Hosseini Published: 2004 Genre: Fiction Rating: 5 out of 5

This is one of my all-time favorite books. I was blown away by the experience of the roller coaster ride of the book. Khaled Hosseini takes the reader to Afghanistan where the reader wanders into the beautiful landscape, the rich culture, and then the war! I did not know what to expect from the book before I read it. The story is about the friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant. I was taken back to my childhood while reading about the carefree days of Amir and Hassan in the city of Kabul. Hassan is an expert in knowing where the kite lands is a successful kite runner for Amir. Both kids are motherless; while Amir's mother died during childbirth, Hassan's mother abandoned him and his father. Amir's father, who he calls Baba, treats the kids equally and buys both of them the same gift. One triumphant day, when Amir wins the kite tournament, Hassan encounters a tragedy while finding the kite. In the second part, Amir and his Baba escape to Peshawar, Pakistan, to escape the invasion of the Soviet Military, leaving Hassan and his father behind. The story continues with Amir makes his life, marrying, and becoming a successful novelist. The twist in the plot is when Amir receives a phone call from his father's old friend Rahim Khan, who talks about Hassan and the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The story is very gripping and shows us how Afghanistan went from a liberal society to being ruled by religious police. How the lives changed forever for everyone who lives in fear every day. In the end, the story resembles a Bollywood movie. Either way, the story, narration, the beauty of Afghanistan, and the struggle make the book worth reading. Favorite lines from the book:

• And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

• When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

• It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

• There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.

• That's how children deal with terror, they fall asleep.