I had no idea what to expect coming into this book. A few years ago I read Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and I enjoyed his writing style. So, based on being pleased with the other book, I picked up A Thousand Splendid Suns and let me tell you – this is one hell of a story! It’s the story of two women in Afghanistan and their struggles for respect and the ability to live a decent life in a country that is seemingly in a constant state of war. The novel is brilliantly written and is at times both heart-wrenching and brutal. At some point in the novel, the reader is actually pressed to expect the worst outcome for these women in any pending situation. Hosseini captures despair unlike any other writer that I’ve read in the last few years.

The story’s two main female characters are Mariam and Laila. The two women are separated by a number of years, but they wind up as wives to a hardcore man who beats and humiliates them. It’s tough to read at some points, but the quality of the writing makes it worth the intensity. Though these two are wives to the same man, their histories are anything but similar. Mariam grows up as the unwanted child of a wealthy man who conceived her with a servant woman. Being of such a history, Mariam is cast aside and literally lives in a hut until her mother passes away (the story kicks into high gear at this point, but I won’t spoil it for you). Mariam is then sent off to marry a man name Rasheed who requires her to follow a strict Islamic lifestyle, which includes wearing a burqa and being subservient to her husband.

Laila, on the other hand, grows up across the street from Mariam and Rasheed. Her father is a university professor before the Soviets begin to occupy the country. As a professor, he stresses the importance of Laila getting an education which ultimately brings Laila’s life full circle (you need to get to the end of the book to understand that piece of the story). Laila grows up with a young boy named Tariq. The two of them share a budding love story until the war gets so bad that Tariq’s family is forced to leave Kabul (which is where the bulk of the story takes place). From that point, the story take a variety of twists and turns.

After her family is killed, Laila winds up as Rasheed’s second wife. One of the most well written parts of the book is when Laila gets beaten for the first time by Rasheed. It really puts the reader in a position to hate Rasheed, which is where I found myself about midway through the book.

The rest of the story deals with Laila’s children, her desire to preserve what she had with Tariq, and Mariam wanting her life to mean something of importance (which it ultimately does). Of course, there’s a lot more to this story to fill its 415 pages and I encourage you to read the novel to get a full picture of this wonderfully written story.

In an Afterword, Hosseini asks his readers to look at the United Nations website regarding refugee services and support. Feel free to click on that link to see the website. And, if you’re looking for a startlingly powerful and brilliantly written read, then I suggest picking up A Thousand Splendid Suns.

The Kite Runner is a powerful story of a man named Amir. The story follows Amir from his days as a young boy to a fully grown man. Amir is born a child of privilege in Afghanistan during the 1970’s. His father, Baba, is a well known Afghani having given many of his neighbors their first “chance” whether it be a loan or a job or a hand out when it was most needed. Baba has a servant, Ali, who has a son named Hassan. Amir and Hassan grow up together and The Kite Runner is essentially the story of how their close friendship affects Amir for the rest of his life (or at least until the end of the book).

Hassan is fiercely loyal and protects Amir from some of the bad kids in the neighborhood – though he does this at the cost of his own safety. Ultimately, defending Amir puts Hassan in a situation where he is harshly abused by another boy and his two cronies. Amir witnesses the assault and his response determines the path of his mental stability for the rest of his life (or depending upon how you read the book, until the end of the story).

Amir buries his knowledge of the assault and goes on living with Baba until the Russians begin to invade Afghanistan. At that point he is rushed with his father out of the country and they eventually wind up in America. Baba – who has given Amir much of the direction in his life – passes away from cancer, but not before assisting Amir in becoming engaged to a young Afghanistan woman named Soraya. It turns out that there is a large Afghan community in the San Francisco area and Amir becomes a part of this community with his new wife and her family. Then, almost out of the blue, he is called to Pakistan at the request of one of his father’s former business associates who is now dying. Before the associate passes away, he makes a request of Amir: to make everything good again for both his father and himself. To make things good, Amir will need to find Hassan’s son, Sohrab, and bring him to a better life.

The story gets very quick and very interesting at this point and the last hundred pages or so are very good. As a child, Amir won a large kite-flying tournament and he had some assistance from Hassan to help collect the prize kite. The final scenes of this book revisit a kite race setting and gives hope to the reader that there might be hope for Hassan’s son, Sohrab.

There are times during this story when I feel like Amir tortures himself too much over his inaction as a child. Amir expects much from himself, but that is because of what his father expected of him as a young boy. I wonder if all young people have this mentality about themselves and their actions. I hope not!

I am grossly oversimplifying the last 100 pages of the book for the sake of this review, but I would suggest reading The Kite Runner if you have some free time and are looking for a good story. And if you do read it, let me know what you thought!