A Thousand Splendid Suns

I’m an idiot. I knew from the very beginning when I read the synopsis, I should not read this book. But I did. I knew this book will make me depressed and still I went ahead and read it. Now I’m all miserable and angry. Now I’m paying for my idiocy.

I mentioned this book, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ (TSS) by Khaled Hosseini, in my review of ‘The Summer of Secrets’. Even back then when I chose to read ‘Summer of Secrets’ first I knew that TSS is one of those books that will make you feel hapless and hopeless. But I also knew then that TSS is going to be superb, gripping & masterful, and that’s why I read it. And I’m right on both accounts; it is a masterful gripping story, and it made me feel hapless and hopeless.

TSS tells a story about two women, Mariam first then Laila, how they live their life in Afghanistan, how they struggles against the discriminations women faced there. TSS is also about how they survive the wars; war against The Russian, against the Mujahideen themselves and then against the Taliban.

As I flipped through the pages of TSS, I realised that I need to do something so it won’t be too depressing for me. So I decided to cushion the impact by reading it bit by bit, just to make me less attached to the story. It didn’t work at all. The author was just too good in capturing and describing the misery suffered by the two characters. And the author made an excellent job too in capturing the stupidity and cruelty of those men who claimed they were just abiding to the Islamic laws in their cruelty.

I said above that apart from being miserable, I also felt angry. I felt angry thinking how stupid some people can make Islam looks like, and to think they claim they were only doing God’s wish. Though TSS was fictional, the story in it was based on real events. It happened before, it’s happening now and it will continue in the future. I felt scared as well. Some people just never had the chance, the odds were against them from the beginning. No matter what they do, it will never be good enough. No matter how hard they tried, in the end it will mean nothing. I just hope I wont be one of them.

So please read ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’. Definitely worth the money and time. You won’t regret it.

And by the way, this book did make me cry. In that one part, I just can’t hold it back. Stupid book!