A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

SMRITI
11 Comments »


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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THE KITE RUNNER

SMRITI
4 Comments »


This is the second book I picked up to read after exams, and finished it in my personal record breaking single sitting. Never has any other book captivated and enthralled me like THE KITE RUNNER. I came to know about this book thanks to, yet again, Sari Bua. She is the same aunt who introduced me to The Chicken Soup for the Soul book many years earlier.

THE KITE RUNNER is a book, which I ventured out into reading due to the fact that it has been made into a major motion picture and its advance screening at various places was generating rave reviews. As it normally happens with me, most of the times the books recommended with the "must-read" or "awesome" tag, end up disappointing me spectacularly. That series of disappointments has finally come to an end with THE KITE RUNNER.

Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel, THE KITE RUNNER, starts out by describing the relationship between two Afghan boys --- Amir, who is the novel’s narrator and the son of a well-known Kabul businessman, and Hassan, the son of Ali, a servant in the household of Amir’s father. Amir is a Pashtun and Sunni Muslim, while Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a. Despite their ethnic and religious differences, Amir and Hassan grow to be friends, although sometimes Amir is troubled to label their relationship as "friendship".

Amir relationship with his father is often a source of tension in his life. He comes to feel that maybe Baba (his father) supports Hassan more than him. Baba feels that Amir isn't strong enough to carry the legacy of his father. Whenever Amir falls into trouble, its usually Hassan who comes to his rescue. Desperate to prove himself to his father, Amir turns to the kite flying tournament, and at the age of 12, with the assistance of Hassan, he wins the annual tournament in Kabul. Hassan, the best Kite-runner in all of Afghanistan, offers to run down and bring the kite which Amir last sliced to win the tournament. But Amir’s victory turns into a nightmare when he witnesses a vicious assault against Hassan, and fails to come to his aid. Amir’s cowardice is compounded by a later act of betrayal that causes Ali and Hassan to leave their home, and he now faces the nightmare prospect of bearing the burden of his ill-fated choices for the rest of his life.

A few years later, the Russians invade Afghanistan, and Amir and Baba are forced to flee the country for California. In America, Amir graduates, marries and becomes a successful novelist. Amir’s world is shaken in 2001 when he receives a call from his father’s best friend, informing him that “There is a way to be good again.” That call launches him on a harrowing journey to rescue Hassan’s son Sohrab, orphaned by the brutal Taliban, and at the same time redeem himself from the torment of his youthful mistakes.

This is one of the books that you can't put down that easily. Hosseini's writing is like a beautiful poetry. Every word takes you deeper into the heart of Afghanistan, over a period of 30 years. The story of Amir and Hassan's friendship lingers in your mind long after you've put down the book. As I read it, I just had a haunting feeling that I was there first hand, looking at all the events taking place. Khaled Hosseini's writing is so powerful that you feel the pain, the friendship, the betrayal with each page that you turn. For a debut novel, THE KITE RUNNER is just breathe-takingly well written. A sure must read for everyone.


Excerpts from the book:



Excerpt # 1:

December 2001
I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.


One day last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He asked me to come see him. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn’t just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins. After I hung up, I went for a walk along Spreckels Lake on the northern edge of Golden Gate Park. The early-afternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. Then I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high above the trees on the west end of the park, over the windmills, floating side by side like a pair of eyes looking down on San Francisco, the city I now call home. And suddenly Hassan’s voice whispered in my head: For you, a thousand times over. Hassan the harelipped kite runner.

I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought. There is a way to be good again. I looked up at those twin kites. I thought about Hassan. Thought about Baba. Ali. Kabul. I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today.


Excerpt # 2:


Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time can break.

Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And under the same roof, we spoke our first words.

Mine was Baba.

His was Amir. My name.

Looking back on it now, the foundation of what happened in the winter of 1975 - and all that followed - was already laid in those first words.

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