book review: "A Thousand Splendid Suns"...

.. by the Afghan author who also wrote "The Kite Runner", adapted as a screenplay and made into a movie. Khaled Hosseini was born in in Afghanistan, has since moved to the US, a prolific writer who has received quite a bit of literary acclaim. I found this in the library, with the recorded books, eleven discs that have taken me nearly two weeks to complete, since I have not been traveling to spend hours in my car listening.

The story is about two Afghani women, and their lives of hardship in a culture that does not place any value on being female. One of the women was born to a domestic worker, and raised by her single mother, who was shunned by the community where they lived. Her life was hard, but when the struggles of daily survival are all you know, you accept the circumstances as normal. When she went searching for her father, who was prosperous, with several wives and a number of children, her father was persuaded to marry her off. She was given to a man much her senior who lived in Kabul, owned a small shoe shop, made hand made footwear. She was unable to successfully bear children, and frequently physically abused, often treated comtemptously by her husband.

Her husband took a second wife, who soon had a baby girl, but being a female, was considered of little value. The second wife eventually had a second child, a son. The circumstances in Kabul as the Soviets invaded became dire, shortages of everything, constant armed conflict in the streets. Insurgents, backed by other countries, eventually took control of the country as the Soviet army withdrew, but there were still food and medical shortages, hardships in daily life. The difficulties these women faces in their efforts to survive, provide food for the family were unimaginable. The man they lived with was brutal beyond belief. He forced them to put the daughter in an orphanage, as he could not provide food for all of them.

The story was often heart-wrenching, sharing the daily struggles of life in a third world country. Related the efforts of these two women who started off as contentious, but soon became united in their common efforts to survive. I often had to pause the narration, finding the telling of their hardships often too difficult to hear. But finally finished the story, and would recommend it as a true eye-opener for anyone who would like to gain a better sense of life in a war-zone.