Book title: A Thousand Splendid SunsAuthor: Khaled Hosseini
ISBN: 978-0-7475-9377-5
Publ: Bloomsbury
Finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini. To be honest, I liked his first book, The Kite Runner many times more than this. I don't mean to say that this creation of his has proved itself any inferior to his first work in terms of quality; it's something else. The narration dwells mostly on physical descriptions (which, of course, he has done wonderfully enough), and it doesn't necessarily take a Khaled Hosseini to bring forth something like this. But I don't mean that it's an easily possible task though. But I'm sure, only he can give birth to something like The Kite Runner, and no one else; it deals with such an abstract theme, and it needs great skill in making the reader really imbibe the feeling of something so indefinable with the help of mere words. I was literally walking along with each and every word, each and every line of The Kite Runner, but in this book it was hard to bring back my wandering mind in far too many places.
Whereas the first book tells the story of the two boys Hassan and Amir, this one is about two girls Mariam and Laila. Both stories are set against the backdrop of an Afghanistan ravaged senselessly by the rule of religious fundamentalists. But I saw many people who said this second book was far better than the first one. Is it because I'm a male that I liked the first book that tells us the touching story of two male friends more? I have had this experience with the movie Dil Chahta Hai which is about a group of boy-friends and the intricacies and ups and downs in their relationships. All my male friends who have seen it have liked it immensely, and I myself am a huge fan of it. But alas! all the female friends of mine who have seen that movie thought it was mere waste of time.
Apart from the main bulk of the plot, something was there which couldn't fail to capture my interest entirely. It is the magic that flows out of his pen when he portrays love and romance and eroticism. Eventhough such scenes are not too many in this book, wherever they were, they had this mesmerising power in them which I was incapable of overlooking. It brought back to my memory once again the romantic scenes of his first book which my mind couldn't help registering with a star-mark back when I read it. With these two books, he has proved that he is simply the best at it and I believe that a romantic love story from him will do really great! And I desire with all my heart that his next novel be one such dealing with soft and tender emotions that soothe the heart and make it dream and carries one gently into a world all too different from our mundane one, where there is only love and affection and no hatred and cruelty and no deafening sounds of sinister explosives and disturbing gunshots, where our minds slip smoothly into an all-embracing peace..
Courtesy: lunacia, who made it into a bookring
4 comments:
I don't know if it's about being a guy or a girl, because I haven't kept track of my friends' opinions & their gender. But I myself liked 'The Kite Runner' much more, because there was an authenticity about the characters which was a bit strained in characters of 'TSS'. Perhaps, it's the magic of a first book, perhaps those words had steeped in the author's mind a long, long time before they were put down on paper. Or it might be that after the success of his first book, he felt some pressure to write on more socially relevant topics & therefore, he doesn't 'own' the characters of TSS as much. The possibilities are endless, but TKR weaves a different sort of magic, I agree.
Sherene, thanks for stopping by!
Nice reviiew....I read the The Kite Runner....it's one of his best creation. I like the way he narrates the things, feelings, etc.
Someday I will buy this A Thousand Splendid Sun...
About Dil Chata Hey.....sorry buddy I hvn't watched it...despite being a male..
This story weaves the stories of two fictional women, who live with great oppression, through the filter of Islamic fundamentalism and the atrocities of war. It illustrates their will to survive and make the best of their situations, despite political and familial turmoil. Told from the points of view of the women, it is a book I can barely put down. I loved the Kite Runner, and eagerly await a new story by this amazing soryteller.
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