‘A Thousand Splendid suns’ is basically a story about two women, from almost a generation apart, who are thrown together by fate as wives of the same man. Half the book is about the backgrounds of both the women. The first one, Mariam, is an illegitimate child of a wealthy man. She loves her father, until she is married off hastily to a much older man by him. She used to look forward to the time that she used to spend a kid and as a teenager, never believing her mother even a word that she would say against him. But when she sets out to meet him, he does not meet her. And in a quick succession of events her mother commits suicide, she has nowhere to go and nobody wants her, so she is married off to a widower. The man turns out to be idiosyncratic and temperamental. But she learns to deal with him. It does not help that she is not able to bore him a child.
Second woman is Laila, who in a strange turn of events finds herself in Mariam’s home. Her father was particular about Laila’s education, and her upbringing was pretty liberal. But in a freak explosion, her parents are killed, and she survives. She hears of the demise of her boyfriend, Tariq. Finding herself 6 weeks pregnant with Tariq’s child, and knowing fully well, what happened to women with illegitimate child and women in general without anybode to protect, in Taliban, she agrees to marry Rasheed, Mariam’s husband.
This is their story, Mariam’s and Laila’s. I would say, I liked ‘Kite-Runner’ more, but this is not bad either. I found the beginning part, marginally slow, with too many pages dedicated to their growing up and reaching the main story. After a while, you get a little restless about reaching the main part of the story but towards the end, it is quite fast-paced.
I would definitely recommend it, and I think I would give it 7.5 out of 10. Read another review here.
