A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khaled Hosseini

After reading Kite Runner, and being told over and over again for probably the last year that it was the better one and I had to read it (hi Lynn!), I finally picked up A Thousand Splendid Suns. She certainly has a point. A Thousand Splendid Suns was very moving and, while upsetting like its predecessor, was an incredible book.

As opposed to Kite Runner, which was about a privileged boy from Afghanistan and his relationships, A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on the women of Afghanistan throughout the wars and political upheaval. I can certainly attest that the writing is realistic. It’s gritty, gloomy, and brutal. It’s as upsetting as the author’s first book, but perhaps even more so because of the sheer unfairness of nearly every situation. It’s the unfairness that strikes me the most. And I think this one was more upsetting because it’s slightly more relatable. Not that relatable though, because never have I appreciated the privileges of living in America more.

I suppose the realism and relatability are the book’s greatest strengths. I was significantly more invested in the plights of Laila and Mariam than Amir in the first book. Both are equally as jarring, however, in the Kite Runner, Amir had significantly more control over the events that were happening to him.

The power of A Thousand Splendid Suns would be diminished if everything had been tied up in a neat little happy bow, so I can appreciate the way that the author goes about writing the book’s events, but parts of it made me want to be sick. This is certainly a book out of my typical wheelhouse, I liked it all the same, but I think that I’m going to need some light reading for my next one. The one two punch of Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns was almost overwhelming.

I can’t decide whether this book is a 4 or a 5. It’s one that I would like to revisit in the future, but the upsetting nature of most of the plot makes it unlikely that I’ll be reading it over and over like I do with other books. For the purposes of rating and tagging, I’m giving it a 4, but know that it’s very close to a 5!