Book Report: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Then one day, Tariq appears outside the house. When Rasheed returns home from work, young Zalmai tells his father about the visitor. Rasheed is enraged, he bursts into acrimony, animosity, annoyance.

… there’s a storm..

… he creates hell. Rasheed beats Laila with his belt, He seizes..

. she restrains, he pulls… she breaks..

. he pelts… she dissolves..

.. ut Mariam comes to Laila’s defense by killing Rasheed with a shovel. To prevent Tariq, Laila and their two children from being hounded by the Taliban all their lives, Mariam sacrifices herself for them by onfessing to the killing of her husband.

Laila and Tariq leave for Pakistan with the children. Miriam is publicly executed (shot).

Mariam ends up killing Rasheed in trying to save Laila from being killed by him. Strangely Mariam decides not to run away with Laila, even though Hosseini doesn’t Justify why not. Except that he wanted her killed at the hands of Taliban, to leave that bitter feeling against them. So, Mariam is executed by the Taliban, who “cannot” accept her story because of her being a woman*. Thus, Mariam’s woeful existence comes to end.

Her whole life is a necklace of tragic events, pieced together one after another.

And with her death, the reader is left with an enduring sense of sadness for Mariam, especially in the fact that Hosseini never did give her a break in her fictional life. Hosseini does do a good Job in creating connections between readers and characters. As for Laila, she ends up traveling to Pakistan to marry her original love(r), eventually returning back to Kabul to work with an orphanage