75Th Blog - “A Thousand Splendid Suns" By Khaled Hosseini

I'm always eager to find out and read those books, that relates with Social causes and yet described and narrated in a typical fable style. In the case when the Author is already critically acclaimed across the globe, It must be essential to read those books to find out the content that works as smash hit from the perspective of Author. 

 

Often most of writer completed their books in a very short span of time, apart someone takes an year sometime more than an year to complete a single book. At a single time they only engaged with a single book, results in world-wide plaudits. And it is very good to read an author, whose books was already critically acclaimed and read by masses.

After completing “The Kite Runner” By Mr. Khaleed, I was waiting for his next book to release. “The Kite Runner” comes in a category of few books, that capture and portray the relations. It is one of the beautiful crafted novel and unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant. Since this book is already so popular that need not any description.

When I come to the book “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, as per my perspective this book is good but not good as “The Kite Runner”. While as per remarks of many good reviewer world-wide, this is better than what the Author portrait in his last work. I purchased this book after reading the summary that was on back cover page. But the story was totally different from that. Sometime reader feel bore due to very wide unnecessary description in the book.

This book is divided into four parts, with a focus on Mariam in the first part, continuing Laila in the second and fourth, and the relationship between the two women in the third part.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. It is the story of poor, uneducated women Mariam who have to endure the hardships of life. The story begins with an abusive sentence “She was five years old when she heard the word HARAMI”, “HARAMI” that normally used to call for street people. This novel narrates the horrors and terrors that a lot of women have gone through during certain period in Afghanistan, the war torn country, and the narration through the lives of two woman Mariam and Laila. Going through All kinds of Physical abuse of hitting, kicking and slapping, brutal beating, Struggling the cruel extremely sadistic Rasheed, And suffering all kinds of violence and subjected to his shifting mood and volatile temper. Witnessing the ugliness of war, the fate of loved ones, grieving for lost lives. The end of the novel give some hope in its last scene after all the violent accidents, with Laila's pregnancy, Kabul rebuilding, and a loving family reunion. The novel centers around the friendship between Mariam and Laila.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once a remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship. It is a striking, heart-wrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love, a stunning accomplishment. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years, from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding, that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives, the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness, are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

This book is not good as “The Kite Runner” but still is a good read.

Regards
Dhitendra

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