A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (2007)

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I had high expectations of the author who penned The Kite Runner and I must begin by saying that Khaled Hosseini did not disappoint. This not a true story, but it cradles the truth of countless stories. The characters we meet are undoubtedly echoes of real lives whose pain and tragedy are as visceral as the love and sacrifice rooted firmly in heart of this book. A Thousand Splendid Suns follows the intertwined stories of two women who find true friendship and quiet happiness amid their domestic prison, set in the radically shifting political landscape of Afghanistan's last fraught 60 years. If you're interested in the endurance of the human spirit and it's incomprehensible tenacity to cling to hope, this is a story for you.

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Overview:

A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the story of two women struggling to carve out their place in an unforgiving world and the deep friendship that grows between them as they do. First we follow Mariam, the bastard daughter of a wealthy man and his former maid. Mariam's mother is jaded and embittered by her lot in life and does her best to impress upon her only child that the world will give her nothing. In childish desperation on her 15th birthday, Mariam seeks out her father at his home but soon finds herself betrayed and quickly wed to a brutish middle-aged shoemaker named Rasheed. He treats her well at first, but after it becomes apparent she cannot bear him a child, their relationship sours to vicious abuse. Several years after the fact, across town, Laila is born. She is the daughter of a scholar and a mentally unpredictable but kind mother. Unlike Miriam, Layla grows up knowing the love of her family and childhood best friend.

When the events of Afghanistan's volatile history begin to unfold, tragedy strikes Layla's family when she's barely a teenager and is left utterly alone. Rasheed and Mariam take her in, but Rasheed corners her into marriage soon after she's recovered, unaware, for now, that she's carrying the child of her childhood love.

Despite a rocky start, the two women are surprised to find tentative forms of family, love, and devotion amongst each other while they struggle to survive under the tyrannically abusive rule of their husband. In a society where women learned to survive under increasingly radical laws enforced by beatings and threat of death, these two characters defiantly, relentlessly, march toward the people they love the most and a life of freedom.

Characters:

Mariam:

Mariam is given very little in life, but her quiet, tentative determination to eek out satisfaction in a life that's constructed to give her anything but is admirable. Her childhood trauma makes her retreat internally, asking for so little and enduring so much. For a long while, she believes her mother's mantra that women like her deserve nothing. It's not really until she meets Laila that she finds something to fight for. In the end, it's Mariam who strikes the killing blow to Rasheed and it's Mariam who sacrifices herself, tearing open the only opening for hope for Laila. For someone who doesn't believe in heroes and gifts, Mariam wholly embodies that for Laila and her children. She meets her death bravely, finding purpose in knowing her death has set the ones she loves free.

Laila:

A foil to Mariam, Laila grasps for what she wants in life and hangs on. She refuses to bend to the rules of society and doggedly take beating after beating for walking alone to see her daughter in the orphanage. She and Mariam become deeply connected companions, sisters of a sort, while they work together to survive under Rasheed. Laila's happy ending of marrying her childhood love, whom she believed dead (thanks, Rasheed) comes at the cost of Mariam's life. She lives on carrying freedom's weight in gratitude.

Rasheed:

Although he's a brutal and violent man, Rasheed's character is the product of society and grief. After losing his young son, Rasheed desperately wanted a child from Mariam. When biology doesn't pan out for them, he blames his wife and punishes her for his continued grief. Rasheed comes from a more conservative ethnic group that believed women to be property and servants. His treatment of his wives is despicable, but his deeply seated pain, we can empathize with, making him a complicated antagonist.

Final Thoughts:

This was a beautiful work of fiction. What I really appreciate about Hosseini's work is his ability to help us see a humanized Afghanistan. As Americans, it's easy to think only of the war-torn poverty and violence that plagues this part of the world but Hosseini's books show the family, the tradition, the pride, the love, and the beauty of this place before the violence began to degrade. The perspective he brings is immensely valuable.

The ending, while tragic with Mariam's death, brings us closure and impresses upon us a sense of weighty gratitude. The choices these characters faced were real and heavy and terrifying. And they were all seated in the rules of a modern country so you know the consequences are grounded in reality. Alongside Mariam and Laila, you grieve the loss and destruction the war cleaved in this ancient, beautiful country. And you admire their cherished hope and unflinching determination for something better for us all.