Wow, where to even begin? A friend recommended this title to me a few weeks ago. The synopsis looked somewhat interesting (in hindsight, the synopsis does the book injustice), so I borrowed it from the library and it arrived just in time for the winter holidays. This was supposed to be a casual bedtime read for me. Instead, for the first time since I read the Harry Potter series as a kid, I found myself completely engrossed in a book for hours and hours. The last line left me sobbing uncontrollably for several minutes.
A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the story of Afghanistan through three decades of conflict. The two protagonists, Mariam and Laila, each get around a fifth of the book describing their contrasting childhoods before their lives intersect due to a tragedy of coincidences. For the rest of the story, narration swaps between these two women as they continue to endure domestic abuse, war, drought, and famine. Hosseini writes in a vivid prose with some Pashto vocabulary injected into the paragraphs for cultural emersion.
The novel highlights the extremes that a mother would go to ensure her child may live a better life than hers. In doing so, Hosseini brings to light the irrational and unconditional love that a mother has for her child in such a way that I can almost begin to, but probably never fully, understand. A Thousand Splendid Suns also forced me to reconsider the idea of fate versus free will. The characters in the story use religion to maintain their hope that a better future is fated ahead of them. Yet at the same time, they are forced to make pragmatic decisions and sacrifices, and attempt to defy their destiny by exercising free will. I still don’t know what to think of this topic and hope to explore it in future readings.
Because many secondary characters were introuced and then killed off, the character development of everyone but the main characters was a bit lacking (to be fair, this is reasonable given the context of the story), and the ones that survived felt a bit flat. However, this is more than compensated by the protagonists having amazing character arcs. The plot felt very organic and real, and Hosseini tells a beautiful story. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story of love, loss, and perseverance, and a heartwrenching reminder of the tragedies that Afghanistan continues to face today.