Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

(Author: Khaled Hosseini)

The author of the literary masterpiece, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini’s next book raised monumental expectations; and just holding the book in my hand for the first time exhilarated me beyond words. But the novel left has me wanting in every which way that I can comprehend!

Each page, each incident in The Kite Runner touched my soul, and deeply. In that novel, Khaled Hosseini wove the story of Amir and Hassan into strands of humanity, friendship and love, so naturally that I wondered if it were his own life he had written about. But A Thousand Splendid Suns (ATSS) did not stir much emotion even with the exceedingly tragic lives of Mariam and Laila, the two prima donnas of the novel. I felt sympathetic, but I think a novel of this genre succeeds in the reader’s ability to empathize. A part of me believes that this may perhaps be due to the gender disconnect - may be it would take a woman to appreciate this novel better.

To add to it, the author has not presented anything too different in terms of narrative. That if you ignore the fact that The Kite Runner was narrated by Amir, but the narrative in ATSS is in third person. As a result, when Amir felt angry, I felt angry too - at Taliban, at God and at life; I writhed in agony when Hassan was tortured. My eyes watered and my heart leapt with Amir and Hassan. I felt, there was a part of me in them.

But the extreme wretchedness of Mariam and Laila’s lives together did not evoke anything more than pity in my heart. The characters are not felt but seen.

In The Kite Runner I lived the boys’ lives … with them. But in ATSS, Mariam and Laila just lived their lives… I just happened to be a spectator.

I am still searching for answers as to why the author, whose brilliance has been lauded by the whole world alike for his first novel, so completely fails to create a mark the second time around. Why do the words sound so hollow? Like BBC News or some Academy Award winning documentary film? Why do the dead children, the stone pelting and beheading, the Taliban, the political turmoil, the madness – feel so fake this time? Is it too much familiarity on my part of the stories from Afghanistan or the lack of author’s first hand experience of the emotions he has written about?

In more ways than one, A Thousand Splendid Suns, has left me wondering. It is not a bad novel – it certainly is not. But it does not offer anything special either. I just feel that I was promised a chocolate truffle but was handed a cube of sugar instead.