I don’t know why he titled this novel “A Thousand Splendid
Suns,” but that mystery aside it has the same hypnotically beautiful sadness I
found in “The Kite Runner,” and perhaps more. There was less relief from the
cruelty of Afghan culture for these women characters than the boys of “Kite
Runner.” Despite the goodness in many of
the people, Hosseini’s assertion, via a character, that the only enemy the
Afghans cannot defeat is themselves rings true. You know something is wrong
when being ruled by a Soviet puppet was the soft option.
Mariam is a good representative of how hard it is to be
good. Growing up, she is the focal point of other people’s generosity and
hypocrisy, love and bitterness, and then is married off to a man who becomes
abusive after she can’t have children. Her husband nearly beats the love out of
her, until he marries a younger woman whose tragic separation from the man she
loves is the tale of part two. How these two women rebuild each other is the
rest of the story, and I will tell you no more.
There is little quoting of the Koran in “A Thousand Splendid
Suns”; the actions of the men express the divided feelings within Islamic
culture concerning the status of women. That individual men either cherish or
oppress women seems to have more to do with their individual natures rather
than scripture, but the easy success of the oppressors speaks volumes to the
cultural interpretation of Islam.
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