Mini Review: “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

I finally got around to reading Khaled Hosseini’s very popular A Thousand Splendid Suns (aff link), and very few books will keep me up reading late into the night (despite having to be up early the next morning), but this book did exactly that.

The novel starts off modestly enough, showing the difficult life of a girl named Mariam who lives in a small hut outside a village in Afghanistan. Mariam’s life is complicated by the fact that she was born an illegitimate daughter to the mistress of a wealthy businessman. After a family tragedy, Mariam is quickly married off to a man named Rasheed and the two move to Kabul. Needless to say, her life doesn’t get any easier.

Then the story shifts gears and begins to follow the life of a young girl named Laila, who has a life quite the opposite of Mariam’s. Her father was a teacher and places Laila’s education above all else and is very loving. Her mom suffers from severe depression, only made worse when her two sons are killed fighting the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

Laila is shown as a normal girl with a special friend named Tariq. They are almost inseparable. But as they get older, the strict custom against boys and girls mixing forces them to spend more time apart.

Then, through a string of very sad events, Laila loses her home and her family. Tariq has moved away, seeking safety in Pakistan as the fighting in Kabul reaches epic proportions. Laila ends up in the care of Mariam and Rasheed. Eventually, Rasheed takes Laila on as a second wife.

Rasheed himself is a caricature of a man who uses his religion, Islam, only when it benefits him. He has a heated temper and something as small as an overcooked meal can set him in beating his wife Mariam. He forces her to live in seclusion, in the name of modesty, and when she can’t give him the son he’s always wanted, he looks at her with contempt and stops any of the signs of affection he once gave her.

As a character, Rasheed doesn’t change. He’s the same throughout the novel. The only change was my dislike of him, which rapidly turned into hatred. He is one of those characters that is easy to hate.

Tariq, on the other hand, is the total opposite of Rasheed. Where Rasheed is selfish and violent, Tariq is giving and caring. When we finally see Tariq as a husband and a father, he embraces the ideals of an honorable man that views himself as equals with his wife. He loves his children unconditionally, even when one of them is a daughter – which the culture usually dictates is weaker and less desirable than a son.

By the end of the novel, I began to view Tariq as a hero. Not because of any one thing he did, rather, he was such a breath of "fresh air" compared to Rasheed that he almost seemed saintly.

Of course, I left a lot of details out of this book, so as not to ruin it for anyone still contemplating reading it. I will definitely recommend A Thousand Splendid Suns and hope you will read it and enjoy it as much as I did. I’m looking forward to reading Hosseini’s other book, The Kite Runner.

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