Giving Voice to Afghan women’s struggle for survival: Khaled Hossein’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

Abstract

and Splendid Suns, Khalid Hosseini exposes the cultural, political, religious and social structures of Afghanistan in degrading and devaluing Afghan women. The strict Islamic laws undermine women’s basic human rights and sabotage their equal participation in human community. This paper analyses the struggle of Afghan women to survive and to free themselves from the suffocating chains of oppression and violence. All the female characters of novel endure terrifying situations where they are abused beyond human imaginations. Hosseini draws a similarity between the fate of two characters, Mariam and Laila, who hail from drastically different backgrounds but are connected by tragic twist in their lives. They share the same pain and agony and undergo similar stereo-typical trials of being women in Afghanistan. The author shows how their struggles and trials lead them to fight back and to hope for happiness and a better future. Further Hosseini underlines the parallel of Afghan women’s suffering with the fate of Afghanistan. He masterfully weaves the personal narrative of Laila and Mariam into the backdrop of Afghanistan’s turbulent recent history. As its women are suppressed by male dominated society and cruel laws of Taliban similarly the country suffers under the deadly invasions of Soviet Russians, Taliban and Mujahedeen and finally its hope of rebuilding under US invasion in 2001.