A Thousand Splendid Suns

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I. Summary A Thousand Splendid Suns is a four-part story set in Afghanistan during a 40-year period, from the 1960’s to the early 2000’s. The first part of the story describes the life of Mariam, a very young girl who was born out of wedlock. Mariam lives with her mother, and her father, Jalil, visits weekly. On Mariam’s 15th birthday, she goes to see Jalil, but when she returns home the next day she learns her mother has commit suicide. Immediately, Jalil’s three wives decide Mariam must become married. They arrange a marriage between her and a widowed man named Rasheed. She moves to Kabul with Rasheed, their marriage starts off well, however, after Mariam has multiple miscarriages, Rasheed becomes very abusive. The second part of the story is about a young girl named Laila; she lives in the same neighborhood as Mariam and Rasheed. When Laila is a teenager, she learns that…show more content…
The story was written very well, but it also extremely sad. I like how Khaled Hosseini showed the struggle between two women from different generations and different upbringings and how they could eventually identify with each other and become close. I thought the fact that having multiple wives was interesting because even though it is permitted in Islam, I did not think that men having more than one wife was common in the world today. He addresses issues that are unfortunately very common in the Middle East and South Asia, such as domestic abuse. He describes the domestic abuse in a very detailed manner, which is a bit appalling, however, it was still a good read. I definitely got a better understanding of all the conflict in Afghanistan, though it was a bit confusing to keep up with. Khaled Hosseini is definitely a brilliant writer and I plan on reading his other book The Kite Runner. This book is perfect for the project because all of it can be related to concepts we’ve learned in
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