A Thousand Splendid Suns Culture

“Of all the hardships a person had to face, none as more punishing than the simple act of waiting.” This quote is from the book “ A Thousand Splendid Suns”, written in 2007, by a man named Khaled Hosseni. This book took place in Afghanistan, focusing on two women, Mariam and Laila from the 1960’s to the early 2000’s. This historical fiction novel based on the hardships of people living in Afghanistan during this time hit spot-on.

“A Thousand Splendid Suns” starts off with a little girl named Mariam. The mood for the book is automatically set when her mother calls her a harami. Born a disgrace to her father and a burden to her mother. Mariam faces a life of rejection and when something unexpected happens and she is forced to go live with her father, and his three meddling wives, things don't turn out in her favor. Next we have

One of the biggest from my perspective was culture. Like when Mariam and Laila are forced to wear burqas by rasheed, it was a very common occurrence for men to force their wives to wear burqas which would cover their bodies from other men. Also their daily prayers to Allah, which everyone in that culture seemed to do. Culture was a very big point in this book, I think it brought a lot of character and backstory. Overall I believe the author understood and described culture perfectly.

Realism is also a really important characteristic in a good book. The author of “ A Thousand Splendid Suns” was realistic with the events in this book. He used quite a few common situations in Afghanistan in this book. For example when Mariam and laila attempted to run away from rasheed. They were immediately returned and punished for their actions. Another common situation used was how rasheed was extremely abusive and no one seemed to care enough to stop it. In Afghanistan it is socially accepted to be physically abusive to your wife to the point of death. The realism in this book was