With an attempt to get rid of her, her father and his extended family marry her off to Rasheed, a shoe-maker and 30 years her senior. She is disillusioned when she learns that her father is incapable of accepting her into his life or home or even acknowledging her as his daughter. Mariam looks forward to her father Jalil’s occasional visits as the only source of joy in her life. She lives with her embittered mother, who often calls her harami which means illegitimate child. Mariam, the older woman, is an illegitimate child of a wealthy merchant. The novel is split in dual narrative, the first being Mariam and the second being that of Laila’s.

The other central characters include Rasheed, Mariam and Laila’s abusive husband, Tariq, Laila’s childhood friend and lover. The novel comprises two protagonists - Mariam and Laila. The book is about the lives and unlikely friendship between two women, generations apart, in the changing landscape of Afghanistan. A book that one needs to read during this lockdown is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Afghan-American author, Khaled Hosseini. Several people have picked up the habit of reading while many are turning over pages of an old book that they had read a long time ago. Yet, the lockdown has become a boon for many bookworms. Spending a considerable amount of time watching movies or television series on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video has now become the “new normal” for us. With the ongoing pandemic, forcing us to remain indoors our options of recreation have become limited.

A thousand suns book