Khaled Hosseini is most famous for his well-known novel, The Kite Runner. Khaled first saw the light of day in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1965 where he originally came from. At the age of eleven, his father got a job offer in Paris and decided to move the whole family across the ocean. After living in the US for several years, Khaled graduated as a doctor (Wikipedia 1).
I have not read the book “The Kite Runner”, but I have seen the movie. Of course some scenes have been dropped, and surely the story has been through a few changes. However, I believe the director has tried to keep the main focus on the fact that Afghanistan went through huge upheavals in the late twentieth century. In the beginning of the movie everybody in Afghanistan is apparently happy and we get to know the well-liked competition – flying with kites. The main character moves to the US for political reasons, and when he returns as an adult, we can see drastic differences between the current state of the country and how it once used to be.
In Hosseini`s “The Kite Runner”, we get to meet a young boy who's father has to escape Kabul during the invasion by the Sovjet Union in 1979. Because of his political beliefs and the fact that he is a public person with a lot of opinions he is forced to take his son with him and leave for America in fear of loosing his own life. In America young Amir meets a girl he falls in love with and starts a new life of his own. Many years later when his father gets very ill and later dies, Amir gets to know that he has a nephew in an orphanage in Kabul. He immediately decides to find him to give the child the life he deserves. When arriving in Kabul Amir is shocked by what meets him. Not only is it huge cultural differences between his new home country, USA, and Kabul, but there is tremendously differences between how Kabul once used to be and the current state of the country. From this point on Hosseini continues portraying the daily life in a country occupied by the Taliban and how women, but also men, has to put up with unbearable rules and obstacles. At the same time Amir continues his journey to bring the forgotten child home to America.
It is obvious that Khaled criticizes Afghani society in different ways, both directly and indirectly. He is a gifted author and he knows how to take advantage of this and tell the world about his beliefs and opinions regarding Afghani life. In the book “A Thousand Splendid Suns” he portrays the society, the treatment of women and the Taliban, from a very impartial point of view, at least he tries. He also brings up issues like forced marriages and marriages to children.
In the first and the second part of the book “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, alltogether it is divided into four parts, we get to know two young girls who gets their lives destroyed when they, against their will, is forced into marriage with an old shoemaker named Rasheed who is more than twice their age. Every day these girls have to put up with both psychical and physical abuse and if they for some reason don't obey him it will result in serious consequences. They main reason for continue living is to please their husband in every single way. At times he beats and starves them and at one occasion he nearly kills his own daughter simply because she is a girl and not a boy. In the end the circumstances is so unbearable that the eldest of the girls decides to kill Rasheed in order to save the rest of their family. For this action she knows she has to face execution but because of the love these girls share for each other she doesn't care at all.
Both this books take place during the civil war in Afghanistan and the author tries in a very concrete way to tell us a story about what happens during these years, and what actually even happens some places today. Like mentioned earlier he brings up issues like suppression and forced marriages witch are, or at least were, very common during the war. One of the main things Hosseini focuses on is the shocking view of women. Especially through “A Thousand Splendid Suns” he describes the life of the average Afghani woman and what they have to deal with. Living in a country where you have no rights what so ever certainly can't be easy and I think this feeling gets very strengthened when you live with a man who doesn't show you any respect. During the twentieth century women were not allowed to work and they did obviously not have the same equal status as men. In “The Kite Runner” we get to see women being forced to wear burka and by several occasions executions where women gets stoned takes place. This were some of the rules that the Taliban introduced through their own legislation called Sharia when they gained power in Afghanistan. A lot of other rules like amputation of both hands for thieves and men having to grow beard also got introduced (Wikipedia 2), but when it comes down to it I believe that women got hardest struck by this derogatory rules and that is what Hosseini is trying to portray through his books.
The fact that Hosseini originally is from Afghanistan makes him very trustworthy in what he writes, but at the same time we know that he has grown up in an American society where Muslims and the Taliban are very much disliked. On the basis of this some people may believe that he has been influenced by American norms and ideas and that he therefore writes negatively about the Afghani society. But in my opinion this simply gives Hosseini a wider insight in what really happened. He has experienced the war from two different sides and is therefore able to tell two fantastic, but at the same time heartbreaking, stories from an objective point of view. I really do believe that Hosseini has written the books with the best interests in mind wanting to tell the world under how terrible circumstances some people live their lives.
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Pictures
https://eportal.cityu.edu.hk/bbcswebdav/orgs/L_ePortfolio2007/Website/ceremony/2007-8/winnershtml/versa_portfolio/Kite%20runner.jpg
http://www.barnstable.k12.ma.us/bhs/Library/images/thousand-sp-suns-comp.jpg
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Wikipedia 1: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_Hosseini
Wikipedia 2: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Kvinner
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