Word Out 2014

A Thousand Spendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

Reviewed by Lubna

When I first heard of the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, I didn’t know what to expect. I instantly thought of hope and inspiration. Little did I know that the story would be much more complicated than that.  A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is truly a gem, and a book that will stay with me forever. It follows the lives of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, who fight for love, freedom and happiness. Mariam, an illegitimate child, spends her early years facing her mother’s abuse in hopes of living with her father. However, after her mother commits suicide and Mariam faces her father’s betrayal, she is sent away and married to a man more than two decades her senior. Laila, born years after Mariam, spends her childhood happily and freely. Her paren'ts allow her to go to school and earn an education, while Laila secretly begins to develop feelings for her neighbor and best friend, Taariq. However, when tragedy strikes and Laila is left orphaned and homeless, she is forced to marry Mariam’s husband Rasheed, and the two women’s lives intersect as they are brought together by fate. Although this book addresses themes that women across the world must face every day, such as domestic abuse, societal values, gender roles etc., I never truly understood the struggle that these women are facing and the problems and injustice they must conquer to earn their rights. After reading this book, I was opened up to a world of hardships, injustice, prejudice, represAsion and captivity. Mariam and Laila must constantly fight for their rights, and conquer, in battle after battle, through patience and persistence. These two women have faced so much in their life, yet by the growing bond that they have, Mariam and Laila find the courage to question the inequity around them and turn their lives around so that they may change their reality into one of many happy endings.