Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Whenever I am asked for a book recommendation from a friend or a stranger, I can only think of one book worth sharing. No matter the genre or theme they seek, I'll always recommend A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I had first heard about it through BookTok, a platform that I am both reliant on and apprehensive of. One post might be a summarization of The Secret History in perfect detail with enlightening anecdotes, while the next post could be someone giving Colleen Hoover 5 stars. To say the least, I take everything I find there with a grain of salt. But I digress; I downloaded an ePub of A Thousand Splendid Suns and settled in.

Booktok - 1 Me - 0

To summarize, Mariam is a young Afghan girl living on the outskirts of town with her mother. Her father, a wealthy businessman, visits her every month but does not claim her as his child. He does this because Mariam is illegitimate, as her mother is not one of his many wives. Her mother resents her for this, referring to her as Harami since she was 5 years old. Illegitimate Child. As Mariam grows, her father continues his frequent visits but denies her entry into his household. On her birthday, she waits for her father to retrieve her, but he never arrives; she goes into town on her own (against her mother's wishes) and finds his house. After sleeping in his front yard, Mariam sneaks through the house's gates; he sees her through a window, shuts the blinds, and Mariam is escorted away. Feeling rejected and idiotic, Mariam returns home to apologize to her mother but never gets the chance.

After this, Mariam is married to a man more than twice her age and is put on a path of torment and pain. Only when she meets Laila, her husband's younger second wife, does an escape from their nightmare come into view.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a tribute to Hosseini's upbringing in Afghanistan, much like his first work, The Kite Runner. His skillful storytelling allows readers to feel moments of sadness and triumph along with the characters, leaving them desperate to turn the page and read more. The book not only delves into the oppressive rule of the ever-present Taliban but also the trials and tribulations that women face every day when met with society's standards of modesty and honor. A Thousand Splendid Suns perfectly captures the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring power of hope, marking the book as an exceptional literary masterpiece.