A Thousand Splendid Suns

"This is an easy read, it’s not heavy, but the subject matter and the themes are pretty tough. Like everyone, I read Hosseini’s debut, The Kite Runner , and I loved it. It’s an incredibly privileged view of somebody else’s culture that you don’t often get. At the time, I knew nothing about Afghanistan , the different castes, and how they all interacted. I absolutely loved The Kite Runner . Then, when I read A Thousand Splendid Suns, because it’s from a female point of view, it really got me. I thought he did an amazing job of writing the female character as a male writer. They don’t always get it right, but I thought Khaled Hosseini did a fantastic job. I thought Mariam was a very engaging character. Because she’s illegitimate, she has no standing within that society and no say over her own destiny. She’s an embarrassment to the rich man whose child she is. At the age of 15, she is married off to this horrible old shoemaker in Kabul. He’s not that old, and he doesn’t come over as horrible to start with, but the idea of being parceled off like that is really shocking to us in the West. Hosseini gets you into that mindset. You see what Mariam has to go through, you put yourself in her shoes, and think, ‘This is just so wrong, it is so awful.’ Then she goes through all these miscarriages, and she can’t carry a baby to term. He becomes brutal and abusive because he blames her for this. That really gets you in the heart. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The next thing you know, he’s brought in a very young wife, and you think, ‘Oh my God, is there no end to this poor woman’s suffering?’ The beautiful thing about the book is that the two women, Mariam and Laila, strike up this incredibly heartrending and beautiful relationship. It’s almost a mother-daughter relationship. I thought it was a beautiful way to focus the narrative through these two characters as you see the Taliban come to power, and the horrific situation for women in this new world. It’s such a powerful book. I’ve heard people say that they didn’t think it was as powerful a book as The Kite Runner , but it got me in an emotional way, much more so. I think that’s because it’s all women. It’s women in Afghanistan now and what they’re going through. It makes me want to weep that we’ve left them to it."