I read A Thousand Splendid Suns having just finished Kite Runner. I would like the opportunity to live life again (who does not?), If only for a chance to reverse the order of this experience. Tat suspect had I read A Thousand Splendid Suns first then none of the criticisms raised about the book, even have imagined, much less expressed. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a wonderful book, a heartbreaking story of weight and intestines of two women, Mariam and Laila, who share a husband throughout the years of Afghanistan's tragedy and turmoil. The fact that Khaled Hosseini can sustain expression, narrative, emotion and interest across two novels with ostensibly similar themes in the same territory is testament both to his supreme skill and depth of the dejection of the country.
Kite Runner, which tells the story of two childhood friends of maturity, separation and reunification, A Thousand Splendid Suns has two women who are forced to join appointment. As in Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini presents ethnic and social class, as the gifts of history. Similarly, Afghanistan's turbulent thirty years from the mid-1970s is more than a backdrop: it is the very substance of the idea, shown as the flesh on the bones of history, the driving force the circumstance that creates the inevitability of the fate of the characters.
And that's why I like to read both books again in a different order, because too often in A Thousand Splendid Suns I felt I had been there before. The backdrop was too much for a close-in parts to the point where I felt Mariam and Laila became puppets of the details and demands.
That, I suppose, also be part of the tip. Whereas Kite Runner focused in the male experience, A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on women and, given what happened in Afghanistan over the past decades, it may be that the sense submission to the developments is the essence of the experience of these women. Therefore, it is almost certain that they were not, themselves, protagonists. It was yourself.
Mariam and Laila differ in age, ethnicity, social class and birthright. Both for different reasons, terminate an unhappy marriage with the same man, Rasheed, older than both combined, brutal, bigoted and sadistic. Rasheed is thus a symbol for the traditional male role without declaring himself as such. In Western terms, we read that the "tradition" as misogyny, however, and here we find the weakness of the book. In my opinion – So it is worthwhile, and not so much that – A Thousand Splendid Suns would have been even more novel Rasheed had been cast as a more liberal figure and also had suffered as a result of his own conflict with the demands of changing times. But Khaled Hosseini A Thousand Splendid Suns made the stories of women and a more complex her husband might have deflected attention from them.
The two women have had very different experiences of young people and demonstrate the capabilities very different to relate to others and even to life itself. But they have enough in common to the need to act together, need to form a relationship, less than an alliance, rather than known. Pragmatism might have been easier, but the two women develop a real bond, a relationship that shares the pain, the disappointment and unfulfilled dreams of his civil confinement. There is tragedy in abundance and the final resolution of a species.
And that was the possible similarity between the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns that prompted me to take my eye of the ball, lose a little interest in history at the midpoint. But if this is a criticism, then it is a very minor one. As I indicated at the beginning, you had to read two books in sequence, otherwise probably has stabilized my criticism differently. But he also said a review of Kite Runner that criticize the book for lack of explicit policy position, I think in A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini should have said more about the status and role of women. Mariam and Laila live a tragedy, but also offered as icons for something bigger, which is the position of women in society in general. A Thousand Splendid Suns in which the author wanted to offer explicit comment on the situation of his characters, at least some general comment, even a dose of polemic to merely label of absurdity. Alternatively, as I said earlier, could have done Rasheed, aging her husband, a little more complex, a little more gentle with the aim of providing a source of social attitudes, without having to justify them.
But these are all minor points. A Thousand Splendid Suns is, in its own right, another crowning achievement by Khaled Hosseini and a reminder to us all that the ideology imposed on blind can be a blunt and dangerous instrument.
About the Author:
Philip Spires
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk
Michael, a missionary priest, has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician, exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a church worker, has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet, a teacher, and the priest’s neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
