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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (view source)
Revision as of 07:48, 9 May 2018
, 07:48, 9 May 2018no edit summary
'''A ''Times Educational Supplement'' Teachers' Top 100 Book'''
There are some books you're just not supposed to say aren't very good. For one reason or another, a book catches the zeitgeist, and if you say don't like it, you're jumped upon as snobbish, jealous, mean-minded, or some other pejorative. Um... hello. Welcome to snobbish, jealous, mean-minded Bookbag. We didn't like [[''The Kite Runner]]'', Khaled Hosseini's first book, and we don't like ''A Thousand Splendid Suns'' very much either. Sorry. It's not that the book is bad, it's just that everyone says it's wonderful, and it isn't.
''A Thousand Splendid Suns'' picks up life in Afghanistan as it is for women. The Kite Runner gave us the perspective of the male exile. This book's story comes from behind the burqa. The two women (yes, yes, there were two men in The Kite Runner too) are Mariam, who represents the fundamentalist side of Afghanistan, and Laila, whose background is liberal. Gradually, the two women - separated by the symbol of the burqa but united by war - are drawn closer and closer together. Throughout the various melodramas, the main thrust of the book is to reveal the status of women in Afghan society and the nation's general breakdown after so many years of successive conflicts. At one point, Laila and her boyfriend take a trip to see the Buddhas of Bamiyan, precious monuments now destroyed as idolatrous by the Taleban.