by Liz Allen

Created on: May 19, 2009

Set against a backdrop of conflicts in Afghanistan, Khaled Hosseini's second novel 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' is essentially the tale of two women, Mariam and the younger Laila. The blurb tells us that it concerns the friendship, 'as strong as the ties between mother and daughter', that develops between them. It is a while, however, before this friendship starts, and there is a great deal of pain and hardship both before and after its beginning.

Part One of the novel, covering a hundred pages, follows the childhood of Mariam. She is the illegitimate daughter of Nana and Jalil, one of the wealthiest men in the city of Herat. Mariam and Nana have been sent out of town to live in a kolba or simple wooden hut to avoid embarrassing Jalil, his three wives and other children. Jalil visits Mariam every Thursday, and she thinks the sun shines out of her father's eyes. She does not heed the warnings of Nana. Mariam's attempts, at the age of fifteen, to change the circumstances of her life result in her being married off to Rasheed, a widower thirty years her senior. Conveniently, Rasheed lives in Kabul, six hundred and fifty kilometres from Herat.

At first I was quite frustrated to find that the eighty-odd pages of Part Two of 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' switch right away from Mariam's story to follow the childhood of Laila, who lives with her parents in Kabul; her elder brothers are off fighting the Soviets. But it wasn't long before I took Laila to my heart as well. We learn of her devotion to her childhood sweetheart, Tariq, who lost a leg at an early age in a landmine accident. Laila's father, Babi, has high hopes for his daughter, but Laila's relationship with her mother suffers from the fact that Mammy constantly pines for her absent sons.

Part Three, at around a hundred and eighty pages the longest section of the novel, focuses on the relationship between the two women, whose lives become intertwined. Alternate chapters are entitled 'Mariam' and 'Laila'. It is hard to write about their relationship without giving the plot away, but I was certainly impressed by the way in which Khaled Hosseini enters the feminine psyche and shows the understanding of the hardships these women go through in a war-torn country where males have such dominance in society at large as well as in family life.

Part Four, the final section of 'A Thousand Splendid Suns', spans a mere thirty-seven pages. The sense of 'now' is portrayed by the use of the present tense, a

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