Book Review: A book you need long pauses just to cry.

Thousand Splendid Suns is a fiction novel consisting of 372 pages, by The Afghan-Ameican Author of Khaled Husseini, the book was published on January 2007.

About a year ago, I googled the books that made every reader cry and the thousands splendid suns was the first one in every google result I open.

Later, one of my close friends told me that he read the book and it is available in Mogadishu, On January 2, 2019, I bought the book from Zaylac bookshop, and finished on January 26, it took me only 24 days to cover it. 

Khaled Husseini is an Afghan-American Author who writes the emotion books with moving stories, to me and to many others “a thousand splendid suns” is the best among all his novels.
 He also has other best selling masterpieces including Kite Runner, sea prayer and the mountains echoed. He studied Biology and Medicine and he has no background on Creative writing, but still, he can manage to make you cry and rock your heart through his words.

This story is about two girls Mariam and Leila who was born and lived in Afghan for a long time, Mariam grew up in herat born as Harami (the children who were not born in a legitime marriage according to the Islamic religion) both her mother and father isolate her because of what they did to her, she experienced all kinds of bullying ranging from forced marriage especially a suitor who 2 times older than her age, she never got love from her parents and she never get the chance to be schooled, later her cruel husband Rasheed used to beat her and bully her for not delivering boys.

Leila’s touching story is also embodied in the book, unlike Mariam, Leila received love from her parents, but her life became upside down when her parents fell victim in the Afghanistan war that forced her to join Rashid's family and marries him.

Mariam and Leila endured the difficulties together.

The story tells us how Afghan citizens especially girls have suffered a lot. How the wars based on extremism have affected the lives of the people and forced millions of Afghans to migrate to the Neighboring countries (Pakistan and Iran)

It taught us that life’s tragedy can be succeeded through persistence and tolerance no matter how severe it is. The story depicts the Children of Afghanistan dealing with poor schooling and poverty and many of them joining in orphanage centers no matter whether their fathers are alive or not.

The interesting part of the story is that Mariam and Leila were friends despite the fact that they share one husband. The book has minor shortcomings as it’s written in complex language that will be alien to the non-native English speakers. In addition, it contains explicit sex scenes that are not good for sensitive readers.

Finally, I recommend this book with star 4.5, the story in it will take you directly to Afghanistan, the story has too many crying and tearful scenes so don’t forget your napkins/tissue papers whenever you want to read it.

Thank you for reading this review and I appreciate your comments.