A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
BY KHALED HOSSEINI
PUBLISHED BY BLOOMSBURY, 2007.
Pages 372


There is absolutely no question about it: Khaled Hosseini is a born storyteller. To keep the reader engaged from page to page with gentle, almost poetic prose, enchanting and engrossing him, this is Hosseini at his best. The master of style waves his magic wand, and sometimes elevates the ordinary to extraordinary heights, and at other times, reduces the extraordinary to pedestrian levels. Like an alchemist, he turns base characters into gold. Once Hosseini referred to himself as a hack; this is so far from the truth that one can only laugh and dismiss it as arising out of his sense of humility, not intelligence.


Having said that, the book is not in the class of his debut novel The Kite Runner. When a master storyteller’s first book sells over four million copies, it is possible that when he plans the plot of his second book, he will not want to stray from the tried and tested, and stick with the successful, familiar formula of his first book. A Thousand Splendid Suns uses the formula of The Kite Runner.


His successful formula: begin with the gentle innocence of childhood, bring to the fore two children of the same sex (two boys in The Kite Runner, two girls in A Thousand Splendid Suns) growing up differently albeit in the same inhospitable environment of Afghanistan, describe one as good looking, privileged and educated, show the other as plain or ugly; show the latter as illegitimate, impoverished and illiterate and make him/her the perpetual victim and martyr, play on the theme of “the good one suffers” to heighten the sense of pathos, contrast the two characters, throw in the darkest of villains, show absolute cruelty, then draw a gloomy background, the feudal society, wars and prejudices (gender bias or race bias), develop the story and move it to the point of the famous 9/11, let the martyr die so the other benefits, show Afghanistan as a region which knows more war than peace, more sorrow than joy, let the medieval or foreign factors play their role and make victims of the protagonists, and boil this concoction.


The result? Another bestseller.


Hosseini starts the story with a gentleness that is uniquely captivating, similar to Arundati Roy’s style in “A God of Small Things” and, like her, Hosseini too, appears to narrate a simple tale at first, but in subtle but deft movements he weaves complexities into the plot, working in an intricacy in the web that is, at first, enchanting, but later becomes convenient and artificial.


This is the Afghanistan of the Soviets and the Taliban, of patriarchy and poverty, and each factor takes turns to keep women in little better than animal existence. The two women. Mariam, the illegitimate daughter with an electra complex, is 15 when she is betrayed by her adored father and is forced into marrying Rasheed, a widower almost three times her age, who enjoys treating her with contempt and violence as she remains childless, after several miscarriages. After 18 years he marries a 14-year-old orphan Laila, whom he dupes into the marriage. The two women start off badly but go on to share a mother-daughter relationship, both disgusted with Rasheed but helpless to resist in a patriarchial world. The law sides with brutal husbands, and Hosseini draws out how despotism at home reduces lives of women to little more than that of chickens in a poultry farm. Despite the happy ending, we are warned in the Afterword by Hosseini that things are really bad for Afghans.


Hosseini is haunted by a sense of doom and gloom; unhappiness-unlimited courses through the book; Hosseini rushes impatiently past happy moments or, if he does portray them, he does so by ensuring he casts a terrible shadow over them, as when for example, Tariq and Laila meet after several years. He contrives to refuse his characters more than an iota of minimal happiness. Sadism, violence, deaths, bombs, anger, brutality, fear, tension, hatred, Hosseini dwells on them at length.


Hosseini appears to be at odds with happiness, which is a pity.


There is altogether too much horror continually happening in the lives of two child-women who suffer unrelieved terror for the major part of the book. There appears to be no safety, no haven anywhere, neither at home nor on the outside, and it is in this trap that Hosseini places his favourite mice in. Neither family nor strangers can be trusted; the family betrays first, then the society, followed finally by the nation.


For those with an insatiable and ready appetite for the gruesome, the unhappy, the tragic, the violent, and the sadistic, this is what the doctor prescribed. The villain knows no goodness, the heroines have no failings; the bad ones thrive, the good ones suffer.

Hosseini sells himself short and refuses to have grown up complex characters living in an adult world. Flat, unchanging characters become predictable and deny the book the depth it so deserves.


The plot is also weak in so many places. Questions remain unanswered in one’s mind: why did Mariam prefer to be humiliated, kicked, used, abused, and treated horrendously, and never contemplated or discussed suicide or running away? Why, when she was already so unhappy, after innumerable miscarriages, and after her husband brought another woman into the household, why didn’t she contemplate killing him, or both of them, or even all three of them? If she did not, why did Hosseini fail to draw this out as part of her profile? Then, later, after an honourable murder, why did she not run away with Laila, why did she suddenly believe that turning herself in was the right thing to do? So many questions remain unanswered that one feels Hosseini has done both himself and his readers a disservice. The best of books must pass the credibility test, and here, because the characters fail the credibility test, so does the book.