Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini

Riverhead, May 2007, $25.95

ISBN: 1594489505

In Herat, Afghanistan, in 1959, Nana was a housekeeper to Jalil, an affluent businessman with nine legitimate offspring and three wives. When Nana became pregnant, Jalil exiled her. She gave birth to Mariam, a harami (illegitimate) baby, who she raised by herself with scorn for the child and the father. When Mariam turns fifteen, Nana hangs herself. Jalil marries his illegitimate daughter to forty-something shoe maker Rasheed. Thus she moves to Kabul to live with her husband. Rasheed enforces traditional values in his young wife and over the years he gets very angry with Mariam, blaming her for her numerous miscarriages.

In the 1980s, the Soviets rule with an iron fist, which ironically allows women some freedoms they never had before the occupation. However, by 1992 the Soviets are gone and the Taliban turn women back into slaves. In Kabul, Mariam's teenage neighbors Tariq and Laila make love just before he leaves for Pakistan; soon afterward, Laila's parents die. Rasheed brings the fourteen-year-old into his household with plans to make her wife number two and give him the heir he deserves. Laila gives birth to a worthless female, but Laila worries that soon her new elderly husband will know this is not his offspring.

This is a fantastic novel that looks at Afghanistan over a four decade period through mostly the eyes of Mariam. The storyline is character-driven as Jalil, Nana, and Rasheed vividly represent one generation; Mariam the sandwich generation; and Laila and her newborn the younger generation. Fans will see the ironies of what happens to women under Afghan, Soviet, and Taliban rule. Khaled Hosseini provides a great saga that will have readers lining up for more tales as A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS will be on most short lists for novel of the year.

Harriet Klausner