Literary Life | A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseini

I've been itching to get my hands on any book by Housseini for the longest time. His work appeals to the history lover in me and satiates my disproportionate fanaticism for fiction, so I grabbed A Thousand Splendid Suns off the shelves at my local library the minute I set my eyes on it. Having been an author recommended to me often over recent years, I probably raced through the book a little too quickly. I am, for all intents and purposes, known to be a little impatient. Endlessly tolerant but a tad impatient. Which makes being a writer one of the worst suited jobs in the world - stories should never be rushed!

 

Nevertheless, revelling in each subsequent chapter was not necessarily a bad thing. I understood all that was contained between the front and back cover but there is no denying that any book given a second, slower reading can generate greater levels of appreciation. For me, Housseini flows from chapter to chapter as seamlessly as he does character to character. I was fortunate to study a History module on India and Pakistan in one of my final year semesters and having that foundation helped indisputably in the reading of this book. Not that such specific knowledge is necessary with the book largely being set in Afghanistan, and I believe my reaction to the novel would have been similar without out it. The main benefit, I feel, was in making these women and the horrors they underwent feel absolutely real to me.

 

Whilst at times the actions of too many different breeds of men caused my stomach to recoil, everything was believable. Which says a lot about the history of gender relations both at home and abroad. I absolutely loved Laila - one of the central characters - and her father whom she calls Babi. An intelligent man and a scholar, I saw (perhaps egotistically) a little of myself in him and his story is one of the most touching of the many moving stories Housseini intertwines into A Thousand Splendid Suns.

 

As something of a collector, I've started collecting - in the loosest sense - my favourite quotes or lines from everything I'm reading or watching. From this comes two sentences that stuck in my mind until the close of the novel.

The simplicity of Housseini's language married with the specificity of the dialect is just pleasing to me and being placed at the end of a chapter absolutely certified my need to rapidly keep on reading. An absolutely fantastic and heartfelt read that I feel will stay with me for years to come.The passage of time is inherently important to the story, at least in my eyes, along with tough transitions from childhood into many precarious states of adulthood. It is a novel that tells many stories and teaches many lessons.

 

Jade x