After "The kite runner" his second novel. Again, it is set in Afghanistan and follows the protagonists through times of peace and, mostly, of war and terror. As his début, this book is full of tragedy and it seems that human suffering can be prolonged indefinitely. This time it's not the children of Afghanistan suffering the most, but its women. As if living through war and occupation wasn't enough, women have to endure not only the discrimination by strict Islamic rules, especially under the Taliban, but also the domestic violence that is hidden behind closed doors. As the reader we can see how a young girl full of hope and ambition is broken by forced marriage, or by the bombs killing her loved ones.
One can not put this book down easily. It is intense, shocking, infuriating and immensely sad. Whatever happy ending there might be at last, it comes at too high a price to pay.
Whether or not this book is better than the previous one is a matter of debate. Hosseini is a master story-teller and both books will take you hostage until the last page. Emotionally you are in for a beating, but at the end it is all worth it, because his stories show us a part of the world today that we cannot easily perceive and that is not well-represented by the breaking-news on CNN. They add the personal, human dimension we all need to fully understand what is happening out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment