While channel surfing sometime ago, I caught half of “The Kite Runner” on TV. It was quite a good film, I must say. And so it got me started on borrowing books by the author Khaled Hosseini. I managed to find “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, and it was a seriously good read. To be honest, I have never been interested in the middle-eastern countries. But the book inspired me to find out a tad more about Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are where most parts of the stories take place. If what’s mentioned in the book is still reflective of what’s going there, it’s really quite unimaginable what the lives of the women/ pple from the lower castes are going through. It must be torturous wearing the burqha, not being able to go anywhere without a male relative, and being stoned to death if you were to commit adultery. i truly hope that at least some changes have been made to these laws. Coz it reeks of nothing but oppression.
Right now, I’m reading “The Kite Runner”. It doesnt seem to be as good as “A thousand splendid suns” but still quite good nonetheless.
The story took place in Kabul, Afghanistan and speaks of the friendship between a wealthy boy (Amir) and his servant (Hassan).
Hassan was fiercely loyal to Amir and was equally protective of him as well. One incident broke their friendship (you've gotta read to find out what!) and eventually Amir and his father fled to America during the Soviets invasion, and the boys lost contact with one another.
Eventually, a twist of events happened, that brought Amir back to Kabul, to give something back to his friend, whom he had started to feel guilt-stricken about. A deeply, moving story, that is steeped in the middle-eastern culture.
I realised a lot of stories tend to mirror the authors' own lives. I've read some other books by Jhumpa Lahiri and Amulya Malladi, and they too, put bits of their experiences into their stories.
Hosseini was from Kabul as well, and during the Soviets invasion, had migrated to California, which was exactly what happened to Amir.
No comments:
Post a Comment