Author: Khaled Hosseini
Length: 367 pages
Year Written: 2007
Why I chose this book: It was recommended to me by my friend Aria!
When I was little, I was big on the Dear America series—these were basically fictional diaries of young girls who lived through slavery, or the Trail of Tears, or the Titanic, or other historical times. They were great books, and educational in a kind of roundabout way. Not since third grade have I read a really good piece of historical fiction, until A Thousand Splendid Suns. It is his second book, published four years after The Kite Runner, indisputably his most famous novel. I haven't read The Kite Runner, but if the storytelling technique and writing style is anything like Splendid (which I would bet a lot of money on), it's probably coming up very soon on my to-read list.
Splendid is a story spanning thirty years, set in Afghanistan against the backdrop of the real-life war and violence that has gripped the country for decades. It is divided between the perspectives of Mariam and Laila, two women with very different upbringings who find themselves in a similar situations of helplessness and captivity. For me, the novel brought to light a perspective I can't imagine I would have come across otherwise. It's astonishing to think that everything we have been told about war with Afghanistan has been filtered and edited so that we are blind, or perhaps numb, to the atrocities the Afghan people have endured—at the hands of the military, the rebels, and the Americans alike. I cried during one part of the book, audibly groaned at others. One scene involving a Caesarian section made my limbs weak and my eyes blur. That's what a good book can do to you.
Khaled Hosseini is a very talented writer with a gift for simple yet illustrative storytelling. Though his characters can at times feel predictable, you always feel that these people are real. And it's probably because, in a way, they are.
Rating: 9.8/10
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