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Amity Business School

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS


INTRODUCTION TO AUTHOR

• Hosseini was born in Afghanistan in 1965 and moved to the United States in 1980 after his family was granted political asylum.

• He is a trained medical doctor and practiced medicine until 2004, the year after his first book, The Kite Runner, was published.

• His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns was published in May of 2007.

• A Thousand Splendid Suns is published in 40 countries. Khaled has been working to provide humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan through The Khaled Hosseini Foundation.


PLOT OF THE STORY

• The novel is divided into four parts:

1.The I part focuses exclusively on Mariam. 2.The II and IV parts focus on Laila.3.The III part switches focus between Mariam and Laila with each chapter.

• At age 15 Mariam, an illegitimate daughter, is forced to marry 40- year-old Rashid, who grows increasingly more brutal as the years pass without a male heir.


• When Rashid is 58, he takes a new wife, Laila. Laila is a bright and spunky 14-year-old who faces the choice of prostitution, starvation, or marriage to Rashid after her parents are tragically killed in a rocket attack.

• Laila is not only heartbroken by the death of her parents, but also the loss of special childhood friend, Tariq.

• Mariam and Laila form an unbreakable bond as they face the beatings and abuse, endorsed by custom and law, that become the reality of their daily lives.


CHARACTERS OF THE NOVEL

• Mariam: She is the illegitimate child of Jalil and Nana.

• Nana: Mariam's mother, who used to be a servant in Jalil's house.

• Mullah Faizullah: A Sufi, is Mariam's elderly Koran teacher and friend.

• Jalil: Mariam's father, a wealthy man who had three wives before he had an affair with Nana.

• Laila: She is a beautiful and intelligent girl coming from a family in which the father is university-educated and a teacher.


• Hakim: Laila's father.

• Fariba: Laila's mother.

• Rasheed: A shoemaker, and the antagonist of the novel.

• Tariq: A boy who grew up in Kabul with Laila.

• Aziza: The daughter of Laila and Tariq, conceived when Laila was 14.

• Zalmai: Born in September 1997, is Laila and Rasheed's spoiled son.


ABOUT STORY

• The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny seen from the perspectives of two women.

• Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age fifteen into marrying Rasheed.

• She grows increasingly brutal when she fails to produce a child.

• Eighteen years later, Rasheed takes another wife, fourteen year- old Laila.


• Mariam and Laila become allies in a battle with Rasheed, whose violent abuse is endorsed by custom and law.

• The author gives a forceful portrait of despotism where women are dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their only path to an accepted social status.

• Each woman in the end is forced to accept a path that will never be completely happy for them.

• Mariam will have to sacrifice her life to save Laila after she murders their husband.


• Mariam confesses to killing Rasheed, in order to draw attention away from Laila and Tariq, and is executed.

• Laila and Tariq get married and leave for Pakistan with Aziza and Zalmai.

• She find a way to keep the sacrifice Mariam has made from not becoming an act done in vain.

• After the fall of the Taliban, Laila and Tariq return to Afghanistan. They stop in the village where Mariam was raised.


• Laila and Tariq return to Kabul and fix up the orphanage, where she starts working as a teacher.

• Laila is pregnant with her third child, and if it is a girl, it is suggested she will be named her Mariam.


CONCLUSION

• This book focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women.

• It starts off programmatically and gains speed and emotional power.

• It slowly unfurls the novel features a very villainous villain and an almost saintly best friend who commits an act of enormous self- sacrifice to aid the hero/heroine.


• It attempts to show the fallout of Afghanistan’s violent history.

• The story talks about contending with unhappy families, abusive marriages, oppressive governments and repressive cultural mores.

• This is a story which has melodrama, pathos, love, sufferings and all shades that a human life can have.

• The characters are intricately portrayed and the smallest of details have been taken care of which makes it an irresistible one to read.



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