Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is book that will grip you and not let you go until you've read to the last page, and then it will cling to your thoughts for many days. It is a story to be remembered.

In A Thousand Splendid Suns we follow the lives of Laila and Mariam, from 1960 to 2005. We experience the impact of war in Afghanistan - the Russians, the Mujahadeen, al Quaida - through the eyes of these two women. They endure unimaginable cruelty and witness intractable suffering and loss. Hosseini is an amazing storyteller and wordsmith. Through these two characters and through the men who murderously charge through their days, their months, their years, a reader can better imagine what it must be like to (1) live through war and (2) to live in a culture that seeks to punish and disintegrate women at every turn.

You will thank God you were born in the USA. You will pray for persecuted women who live in countries that have erased their personhood. You will have a clearer understanding of the string of the events that created al Quaida. You will bond with these two characters who endured so much - yet still they found reasons to love, to survive, to carry on. And, you will be mightily impressed with Khaled Hosseini.

"Each snowflake was a sigh heard by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. All the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women suffer."


View all my reviews