A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Author : Khaled Hosseini
Title : A Thousand Splendid Suns
Published : 23/08/2018
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Pages : 432
Genre : Historical Fiction

     Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality, and fear. Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways and lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism.

     When I came to this book it was not the first time I have read this author, A little while ago I had the pleasure of reading The Kite Runner. This is an author who times and again has managed to capture lands that I have never been to, but yet he still manages to bring them to life in front of me. His books seem to always bring out strong emotions in me as I follow his characters in there struggle in life. I did wait a while before picking this up as I was concerned about reading the same author to close together but the time finally felt right.

     This story managed to deliver me to well-crafted heroines to follow, without it feeling like either of them was lacking. Within the pages of this book, the author managed to capture two complete and complected lives. Their lives are by no means easy as we see them struggle through the recent history of Afghanistan. It is a hard thing to see, as over the years they are stripped of there freedoms be it from a husband or a government. It is through their story that we gain some perspective on our own lives, and how much we have, be it the freedoms of choice to the ability to go to schools. I think for a lot of us Afghanistan is a place on a map, if not somewhere our countries invaded. I know for me I knew so very little about this country. But it is through these two women's eyes that I started to get some semblance of what it must be like to have grown up and lived there. But I do except it is something that I will never be able to completely understand. 

     Once again the author managed to captivate me from the first few pages. He seems to me to have a unique way of capturing what it means to be human. This is not by any means an easy story to stomach. The fates they suffer are brutal and sadistic, It is a real struggle as a reader to sit back in a passive capacity. Too many times I felt like wanting to be able to stop what was taking place on the page before me. It is, however, an all too real reality for a lot of women around the world. It is a subject that I think we find all too hard to view head-on. If recent events have proven nothing else its that for most of the world women are not believed and are pushed to the side. While the events of this book take place in Afghanistan, I can think of a few other countries it could have been.  It would be a lie to say that this book didn't make me angry, it is one of those stories that can not help but drag up deep emotions from within the reader. I think there is probably only a hand full of fiction novels that I can think of that have done this for me. It is within the amazing way that he has intertwined the stories of these two and the history of a country that this book finds it's self. 

     This is a book that completely held me from start to finish, a world within a few pages. As before the Hosseini gave me a grand epic of a story held within the hands of everyday people. Yes at times its a struggle to deal with the themes and violence that this book contains. But I feel you will be rewarded for your, you might just want a box of tissues close to hand as I feel it will make you cry.