A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini sculpts the faces of thousands of people in Afghanistan, torn between war and survival, people, whom we in the safety of our homes can never ever imagine of. The people* in his book pop-out and seize your very existence by the throat and nearly chokes you with tears of sadness.

There is brutality of war, and then there is hope and peace that you thank and say a pray for. There is pain and suppression you find impossible to bear and believe.

His book pivots around two Afghani women, fifteen years apart, caught in the same situation, under the same roof fighting for survival and sanity. A dense narrative of two lives intervened with love, cruelty of war, motherhood and dreams of a better life.

My favorite portion of the book is when Babi, Laila’s father, says these lines to her…
“…You can be anything you want, Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men, maybe even more. Because a society has no chances of success if its women are uneducated…”

*I refrain from referring to the people in the book as just characters of the book as they are so real, all through the book they never seem fictitious to you. …A Thousand Splendid Sons and Daughters of Afghanistan…I would say…