This is one of those books that you put off and then kick yourself for not reading sooner. Because I knew it was heavy, and because AJ and I had just read the also-heavy (also-written-by-Khaled-Hosseini) Kite Runner, it sat on my nightstand for months. I kept convincing myself I needed a break from heavy. Several months and two teen-fiction, vampire-robot-hunting series later (The Infernal Devices and The Mortal Instruments - call me if you want to know more. There's no way I'm doing a public book review of either of those), I finally picked it up.
And I am so glad I did. It was heavy, as promised, but so so good.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is from the Afghan woman's perspective. That's a world I don't know very much about and the insight was fascinating to me. The book starts out jumping between the stories of two separate women whose lives eventually become intertwined. It spans something like 30 years, but the story illustrates what it was/is like to be a woman in Afghanistan - atleast what Khaled Hosseini thinks it's like and chose to portray. The women in the story are forced to wear burkas, endure arranged marriages, stay inside, cope with death, wait on and take abuse from their husbands, etc. Even though the story is sad, I think this book is near the top of my 'Favorites' list. I totally ate up the friendship that grows between the two suffering women, the glimpse it provided into a world so unlike my own, and the beautiful writing.
I highly recommend it.
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