In “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini the historical and political background surrounding the novel is as important to the story as the characters themselves.
As Hosseini explains in the afterward, “war, hunger, anarchy, and oppression forced millions of people… to abandon their homes and flee Afghanistan to settle in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.”
It is among this chaos that the story unfolds: Generations of Afghan women are cheated from childhoods without fear, and carry with them the pain of their mothers and pass it on to their daughters. Serving as the backdrop is the Taliban’s fierce control and the tensions between the Afghan minority, the Tajiks, and the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country.

“To me, it’s nonsense – and very dangerous nonsense at that – all this talk of I’m Tajik and you’re Pashtun and he’s Hazara and she’s Uzbek. We’re all Afghans, and that’s all that should matter. But when one group rules over the others for so long… There’s contempt. Rivalry. There is. There always has been.”
Hosseini opens the book with 5-year-old Mariam, who is exiled from Herat with her mother because of her illegitimate beginnings.
And so Mariam begins young adulthood with a past filled with memories of her wealthy, near-royal father who refused to claim her and a mother who repeatedly told her “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.”
The blond haired, green-eyed little girl named Laila, who was told by her doting father that it was a good time to be an Afghan woman, grows up to find a different reality.
Mariam’s background helps explain her vulnerability as she unwillingly enters an abusive marriage and shares her childless home – and her strength – with the beautiful, young Laila who also comes from a ruined family.
The dynamics between these two women placed together under one deteriorating roof with one misogynist husband play out in unlikely ways.
Home is never a haven to the characters. Both Mariam and Laila are raised in homes with mentally scarred mothers with good days and bad days, early deaths and heart-wrenching relationships with fathers. Only Laila’s daughter, Aziza, understands the love of a mother. In her case, she has two, which is just barely enough to counteract the abusive father figure who hardly acknowledges her existence. As Rasheed, the violent and demanding husband, increases his commands and begins to channel his hot temper toward the little girl of the house, along with the violence he was inflicting on the women, Laila and Mariam connect.
Hosseini’s characters are not necessarily easy to relate to at first, and most are deeply flawed, but this actually makes for more believable heroes. It takes the entire novel to understand Mariam’s consistent compliance, and Laila’s unrealized potential is even more unsettling. Each of these characters has been irreversibly wounded, either physically or mentally, by their ever-accumulating, soul-shattering circumstances.
As the novel progresses, some too-perfect heroic actions come from characters that had earlier in the novel failed us either with cowardly actions, or more forgivably, by circumstance. The daily routines of cooking, cleaning and staying out of Rasheed’s way, make even devastating situations real to readers.
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