"A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS" BY KHALED HOSSEINI
"A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS" BY KHALED HOSSEINI
Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-American Novelist and Physician who also wrote The Kite Runner (2003), And the Mountains Echoed (2013), Sea Prayer (2018) other than "A Thousand Splendid Suns" (2007).
He is an UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) goodwill ambassador. He was born in Kabul, Afghanistan on 4th March, 1965 (age 58 years). He lives in California, United States of America with his family.
Khaled Hosseini is having an American citizenship. His works are best-sellers especially "The Kite Runner".
His debut novel The Kite Runner was a critical and commercial success; the book and his subsequent novels have all been at least partially set in Afghanistan and have featured an Afghan as the protagonist.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, spent 103 weeks on the chart, including 15 at number one in the New York Times Best Seller List.
Hosseini's father was a diplomat and his mother taught Farsi and History in a Girls High School. Hosseini spent some time living in Iran and France. When Hosseini was 15, his family applied for asylum in the United States, where he later became a naturalized citizen.
Hosseini graduated from Independence High School in San Jose in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, where he earned his M.D. in 1993. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1997. He practiced medicine for over ten years, until a year and a half after the release of The Kite Runner.
After graduating from college, Hosseini worked as a physician in California, a situation he likened to "an arranged marriage". The success of The Kite Runner meant he was able to retire from medicine in order to write full-time. His three novels have all reached various levels of critical and commercial success. The Kite Runner spent 101 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, including three weeks at number one. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), spent 103 weeks on the chart, including 15 at number one while his third novel, And the Mountains Echoed (2013), remained on the chart for 33 weeks. In addition to writing, Hosseini has advocated for the support of refugees, including establishing with the UNHCR the Khaled Hosseini Foundation to support Afghan refugees returning to Afghanistan.
The Kite Runner has been adapted into a film of the same name released in December 2007. Hosseini made a cameo appearance towards the end of the movie as a bystander (a la Subhash Ghai who appears in a glimpse in his Bollywood films). when Amir buys a kite which he later flies with Sohrab.
A Thousand Splendid Suns :
Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns,
was published in 2007, and is also set in Afghanistan. The story
addresses many of the same issues as Hosseini's first book, but from a
female perspective. It follows the story of two women, Mariam and Laila,
whose lives become entwined when Mariam's husband takes on Laila as a
second wife. The story is set during Afghanistan's tumultuous
thirty-year transition from Soviet occupation to Taliban control and
post-Taliban rebuilding. The novel was released by Riverhead Books on
May 22, 2007, at the same time as the Simon & Schuster audiobook.
The adaptation rights of the novel were subsequently acquired by
producer Scott Rudin and Columbia Pictures. Though the movie credits were finalized it did not take off so far.
The title of the book comes from a line in Josephine Davis' translation of the poem "Kabul", by the 17th-century Iranian poet Saib Tabrizi:
- "Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
- Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
- One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
- And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls"
PLOT :
On the outskirts of Herat, Mariam lives with her embittered mother, Nana, in a secluded hut. Born as a result of an extra-marital liaison between her mother and Jalil, a wealthy local businessman, the family lives outside of the city in order to avoid confronting Jalil's three wives and nine legitimate children. Nana resents Jalil for his mistreatment of her and his deceptive attitude towards Mariam, whom he visits every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam asks her father to take her to see Pinocchio at a cinema he owns and to introduce her to her siblings. Jalil promises to do so but when he does not come to pick her up, Mariam travels to Herat herself, against the wishes of her mother. Mariam makes her way to her father's home, where she is not allowed in and is informed he is away on a business trip; after spending the night on the street, Mariam is able to storm the house's garden and sees that Jalil is home. Upon returning to her home, Mariam finds her mother has hanged herself. Mariam temporarily stays with Jalil, but is quickly married off to Rasheed, a widowed shoemaker from Kabul thirty years her senior, and moves with him to Kabul. Rasheed is initially kind to Mariam, but after she becomes pregnant and miscarries multiple times, their relationship sours and he becomes increasingly abusive to her over her inability to bear him a son.
Meanwhile, Mariam's young neighbor Laila grows up close to her father, Hakim, an educated school teacher, but worries about her mother, Fariba, who experiences poor mental health following the death of her two sons fighting for the Mujahideen against the Soviets. Laila is close to Tariq, a local Pashtun boy with one leg, and as they grow older a romance develops between them. When Afghanistan enters civil war and Kabul is bombarded by rocket attacks, Tariq's family decide to leave the city, and Laila and Tariq have sex prior to his departure. Shortly afterwards, Laila's family decide to also leave the city, but before they can, a rocket hits their home, killing Hakim and Fariba and injuring Laila who is then taken in by Mariam and Rasheed.
As Laila recovers from her injuries, Rasheed expresses a romantic interest in her, much to Mariam's dismay. Laila is also informed that Tariq and his family died in a bomb blast on their way to Pakistan. Upon discovering she is pregnant with Tariq's child, Laila agrees to marry Rasheed to protect herself and her baby, whom Rasheed believes to be his. When she gives birth to a daughter, Aziza, Rasheed rejects them due to her being a girl. Mariam, initially cold and hostile towards Laila, warms to her as they both suffer abuse. They become confidants and formulate a plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul; however, they are caught and severely punished by Rasheed.
The Taliban rise to power in Kabul and impose harsh rules on the local population, severely curtailing women's rights. Laila is forced to give birth to a son, Zalmai, via a Caesarian section without anaesthesia due to the women's hospital being stripped of its supplies. Laila and Mariam struggle with raising Zalmai, whom Rasheed dotes on and favours over Aziza, causing difficulties in managing Zalmai's behaviour. During a drought, Rasheed's workshop burns down, and he is forced to take other jobs. Due to a lack of food, Rasheed sends Aziza to an orphanage. Laila endures a number of beatings from Taliban when caught travelling alone to attempt to visit Aziza when Rasheed refuses to accompany her as her guardian.
Tariq appears at the family home and reunites with Laila, who learns Rasheed hired a man to falsely claim that Tariq had been killed so that she would agree to marry him. When Rasheed returns home from work, Zalmai informs Rasheed that Laila had a male visitor. Suspicious of Laila and Tariq's relationship and suspecting he is Aziza's real father, Rasheed beats Laila and attempts to strangle her; Mariam strikes Rasheed with a shovel, killing him. She tells Laila and Tariq to leave with Aziza and Zalmai, and confesses to the Taliban to killing Rasheed, for which she is publicly executed.
Laila and Tariq leave Afghanistan and move to Murree, Pakistan, where they get married. After the fall of the Taliban, they decide to return to Kabul to be present for the rebuilding of Afghan society. They stop en route to Herat, where Laila visits the village where Mariam was raised. She meets with the son of a kindly mullah who taught Mariam, who gives her a box Jalil had entrusted to the family to care for and give to Mariam should she return to Herat. The box contains a videotape of Pinocchio, a small sack of money, and a letter, in which Jalil expresses regrets at sending Mariam away, wishing he had fought for her and raised her as his legitimate child. The family return to Kabul and use the money to repair the orphanage Aziza had stayed in, and Laila works there as a teacher. She becomes pregnant with her third child, whom she will name Mariam if it is a girl.
________
The Novel received international acclaim :
"A suspenseful epic" - Daily Teleghraph
"Heartbreaking" - Mail on Sunday
'Love may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you consider the war-ravaged landscape of Afghanistan. But that is the emotion -- subterranean, powerful, beautiful, illicit and infinitely patient -- that suffuses the pages' - O, the Oprah Magazine.
'Hosseini has that rare thing, a Dickensian knack for storytelling' - Daily Telegraph
'The story of the sacrifices necessary to sustain hope and joy, and the power of love to overcome fear. Splendid indeed'
- New York Daily News
'I loved this book - I could not put it down and read it in one sitting' - Fiona Bruce
The Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley suggested that "the central theme of A Thousand Splendid Suns is the place of women in Afghan society", pointing to a passage in which Mariam's mother states, "learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.
In the book, both Mariam and Laila are forced into accepting marriage to Rasheed, who requires them to wear a burqa long before it is implemented by law under the Taliban. He later becomes increasingly abusive. A Riverhead Trades Weekly review states that the novel consistently shows the "patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status."
Thousand Splendid Suns received significant praise from reviewers, with Publishers Weekly calling it "a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan"[ and USA Today describing the prose as "achingly beautiful". Lisa See of The New York Times attributed the book's success to Hosseini "[understanding] the power of emotion as few other popular writers do". Natasha Walter from The Guardian wrote, "Hosseini is skilled at telling a certain kind of story, in which events that may seem unbearable - violence, misery and abuse - are made readable. He doesn't gloss over the horrors his characters live through, but something about his direct, explanatory style and the sense that you are moving towards a redemptive ending makes the whole narrative, for all its tragedies, slip down rather easily.
'A gripping tale ... It is, too, a powerful portrait of female suffering and endurance under the Taliban - Daily Mail
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