Strength Of Women Triumphs Over Tragedy

A Thousand Splendid Sunsby Khaled Hosseini is a story about love, hope, survival, and the strength of women.

The story follows the lives of two women living in Afghanistan during times of civil war and upheaval, who are forced into situations they don’t want to be in.

The first part of the book follows the story of Mariam. She is harami, or “bastard child”, abandoned by her father because her mother was not good enough. He was an important businessman with many other wives living in the city, but he forced Mariam and her mother to live on the edges of town in poverty. Mariam was too young to understand all of this and idolized her father.

When her mother died all of Mariam’s illusions were shattered and her father sent her away to a different city to be married. She was fifteen and her husband forty-five. We watch as she struggles to come to terms with her life and learns to deal with an angry and abusive husband.

As Mariam’s mother used to say:

• Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.

The next part of the book follows Laila, another young girl whose family is about to leave to a better life in another country when a bomb kills her parents. Mariam finds her and takes the orphan under her wing, and eventually Laila also marries Mariam’s husband.

This is a touching book about the strength of women and how together they can overcome the odds against them. Not only will you be moved by the relationship of these women to themselves, each other, and their bodies but you will see what it means to be a woman in Afghanistan and how difficult life can be for them.

Their relationships with their bodies and what it means to be a woman is explored through their experiences with pregnancy. Mariam is unable to carry a child to term and suffers many miscarriages, while Laila has several children with horrible experiences giving birth. This is because there were no services available and the women were not allowed at the men’s hospital, meaning their hospital and the ability to help women in labour or even administer drugs or anesthetic for cesarean were restricted.

This book was very well-written and flowed in an almost poetic way. There was beautiful imagery and the reader felt like they were there in the house with these women watching as they experienced their highs and lows.

These two women face many trials and through it all they have hope for a better life. It’s a sweet story as well as sad, and definitely worth reading.

Contact the author here: mack@morningquickie.com