I’ve just finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hossenini. He is also the author of The Kite Runner. Both books deal with ordinary Afghanis and their responses to the sweeping changes that have taken place in Afghanistan in the past 30 years. They are both excellent reads.
I simply want to encourage everyone to read this book. A Thousand Splendid Suns paints such a vivid picture of the terrible lives lived by Afghani women. And I mean terrible. Apart from living under numerous regimes and governments and surviving in a war zone, they are abused and devalued and, under Taliban rule, forced to wear a burqa. It was disheartening to imagine such lives filled with pain and loss and, for lack of a better word, discrmination (It just doesn’t seem to cover the depth of evilness towards women in this book.). Yet, through all of this, the two women protagonists in the book still want to love and to be loved, want to bear and raise children, and want to build a better Afghanistan. And hence, this is not a purely political book even with its horrifying descriptions of the consequences of the political changes in Afghanistan. Instead, it is a book that aims for one thing above all else: to show the humanity of Afghani women. I hope you find time to read it.
