#16/101
Yesterday I picked up reading on page sixteen, and today I read all the way through the 360+ pages. I don't know what it is lately, but it has been taking me a while to get interested in a book and then when I do, I read the entire thing. So today I finished, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. I've read a lot of "Middle Eastern" fiction lately, and it's all so new and fascinating to me... i.e. Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion, when the Taliban came, their customs and religion, the food, the carpets, the literature, etc. I also find it very depressing. All of the stories are so tragic and heartbreaking, and this book is no different. I cried a little in the beginning and then pretty solidly throughout the last 1/3 of the book. Not that crying determines whether it is a good book or not, but it definitely takes skill to write in such an emotion-provoking manner. I would definitely recommend this book, and after, The Kite Runner, and now, A Thousand Splendid Suns, I look forward to seeing what Khaled Hosseini writes next!
And this is what Amazon has to say... "Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten"—is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters."
And this is what Amazon has to say... "Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten"—is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters."
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