The book I am reviewing this month was recommended to me by my friend Jay Ziolko at the Blytheville Public Library. I tend to forget to mention the library in these book reviews, and I shouldn't, because the library is the place many of us learned to love reading. In fact, when I was growing up, there was literally no place else to go to get reading material unless it was something you ordered through the school for a class assignment. If the library does not have a book you need, chances are they can get it for you, and it's free.
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" was written by Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote "The Kite Runner." I actually read both back-to-back, but this book reaches out and grabs you, and you will not soon forget it.
It was published in 2007 by Riverhead Books through Penguin Books Ltd. The copy I read was hard back, but it is also available in the less expensive paperback and Kindle book formats. The title, "A Thousand Splendid Suns," is taken directly from the poem "Kabul" which was written by Josephine Barry Davis.
The story begins in Afghanistan in the days before the monarchy was overthrown, a time when life was good, people and businesses prospered, and tourists traveled to that country to view its archeological wonders. It tells the story of two women, Miriam and Laila, both Afghani natives, but from different tribes. This is important, because Afghanistan was, and still is, a country of warring tribes. It is not, as some people think, an Arabic country, but is more closely related to the Persians of Iran and the Mongolian descendants of Ghengis Khan. Most of the people in Afghanistan speak Farsi rather than Arabic.
During this time of peace and prosperity, however, the discrimination between peoples of different tribes was more verbal and amounted more to children bullying each other, or a man or woman not getting a raise or given a particular position because the employer was of an opposing tribe.
Miriam was born out of wedlock to a servant woman who had an affair with the man of the household she served. He was very wealthy, and had three wives, so when Miriam was born, he sent her and her mother away to live in a mud hovel in the woods outside of their small town. He provided food weekly for them, and also visited Miriam every week at her home, but Miriam never met her siblings, nor was she even allowed to go into town. She never saw a motion picture until she was married and running her own household.
The pivotal moment in Miriam's life comes when she decides she is going to see the new movie "Pinocchio," which is showing at the cinema owned by her father. When he does not come to pick her up on the designated day, she walks into town and just appears at his door. This single act causes Miriam's life, which has not been very good up to this point, to spin completely out of her control and sets it into a downward spiral into a life of torture and abuse.
Laila was a midlife surprise to her parents, who already had two teenage boys. Her father was a teacher and made a good living, and while other girls lived in dread of the marriages their father's would arrange for them when they were 13 or 14, Laila's father told her she was to go to college and have a career before he would consent to her marrying.
All of this changed when Mohammad Daoud Khan conducted a coup against his cousin, King Muhammad Zhahir Shah, who was out of the country having a medical procedure. Daoud Khan and his communist coalition established a communist republic in Afghanistan.
But the republic was short-lived, and ended when Russian troups invaded and took over the country. What followed were years of fighting, ending in the Taliban taking control and Afghan women becoming less important than the clay pots they used to cook.
The war, and the series of changes it brought about, also brought Miriam and Laila together in the unlikely situation of being more or less forced to marry the same man. The husband (I can't use the word that would actually apply to him) Rasheed is in his sixties, while Miriam at the time is in her mid thirties, and Laila has just turned 15.
Together the two women endure horrible abuse not only at the hands of the man to whom they are married, but also at the hands of the Taliban leadership and patrols. Even so, they manage to raise two children, and one of them finds true love and happiness because of the ultimate sacrifice made by the other.
This book vividly illustrates the plight of women living under radical Islamic law, particularly those living in countries controlled by the Taliban. I urge every adult to pick up this book either online, at the local book store or the local library, and read it. Some of the situations in this story may be too much for young readers, so I would recommend adults only on this one, but definitely a rating of 10.