A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
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Yes Anoop, I've finally read this one. Your review was helpful in making me decide which book to pick up from my ever-piling collection. After the very touching "THE KITE RUNNER", Khaled Hosseini's "A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS" is yet another winner by the author.
Almost everyone is aware of the stupendous success of Hosseini's last work (THE KITE RUNNER) published almost five years ago, and comparisons are bound to happen by THE KITE RUNNER loyalists. In my personal opinion, a comparison between these two books would be totally unfair to the story they present.
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS is a story set amidst the backdrop of Afghanistan and introoduces us to the lives of two women, over a period of forty years. One is Mariam, born in 1959, who is an illegitimate child of a wealthy man from Herat. After a terrible tragedy strikes Mariam at age 15, she is married to a man from Kabul who is almost three times her age. Mariam's husband Rasheed, who seems a pleasant man at first, turns out to be a lecherous, violent man as the story progresses. Mariam suffers a lot at the hands of Rasheed who treats her no better than a useless house-cat.
On the other hand, Hosseini introduces us to Laila, born into the house-hold of a teacher. Laila is much younger than Mariam. She is educated under the guidance of her father, even though the kids still have the opportunity to go to school in the Afghanistan that she lives in. However, as the Soviet troops start to crumble and the mujahideen start running amok, tragedy strikes her and she loses her family and her childhood sweetheart Tariq. Circumstances force her to take cover with Rasheed and his wife Mariam.
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS isn't a story of two women fighting it out with the Taliban. It is a story of the hardships, the trials, tribulations and triumphs of two women in the backdrop of a more than challenging life. Its a story of warmth, friendship, love, affection and every other beautiful human sentiment in the face of adversity. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS is a story of many Mariams and Lailas who suffered a cruel fate in the war ravaged Afghanistan.
Personally, I would still say that THE KITE RUNNER remains my favourite. Having said that, I would not like to discount the fact that A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS makes for a very good read. If you are a fan of Khaled Hosseini, chances are, you will end up appreciating his writing and narrative style even further.
For those who haven't read it yet..Here's an excerpt:
Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami.
It happened on a Thursday. It must have, because Mariam remembered that she had been restless and preoccupied that day, the way she was only on Thursdays, the day when Jalil visited her at the kolba. To pass the time until the moment that she would see him at last, crossing the knee-high grass in the clearing and waving, Mariam had climbed a chair and taken down her mother's Chinese tea set. The tea set was the sole relic that Mariam's mother, Nana, had of her own mother, who had died when Nana was two. Nana cherished each blue-and-white porcelain piece, the graceful curve of the pot's spout, the hand-painted finches and chrysanthemums, the dragon on the sugar bowl, meant to ward off evil.
It was this last piece that slipped from Mariam's fingers, that fell to the wooden floorboards of the kolba and shattered.
When Nana saw the bowl, her face flushed red and her upper lip shivered, and her eyes, both the lazy one and the good, settled on Mariam in a flat, unblinking way. Nana looked so mad that Mariam feared the jinn would enter her mother's body again. But the jinn didn't come, not that time. Instead, Nana grabbed Mariam by the wrists, pulled her close, and, through gritted teeth, said, "You are a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I've endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami."
At the time, Mariam did not understand. She did not know what this word harami—bastard—meant. Nor was she old enough to appreciate the injustice, to see that it is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami, whose only sin is being born. Mariam did surmise, by the way Nana said the word, that it was an ugly, loathsome thing to be a harami, like an insect, like the scurrying cockroaches Nana was always cursing and sweeping out of the kolba.
Later, when she was older, Mariam did understand. It was the way Nana uttered the word—not so much saying it as spitting it at her—that made Mariam feel the full sting of it. She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing; that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.
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