There are plenty reviews of this novel, and no need to add to the superlatives and hesitations of established critics. I read this book in keeping with my Advent goal of reading several novels that take me into countries, culture's and views of the world very different from my own. This book about the struggles and courage to endure of women in Afghanistan, spanning the 30 years from the Soviet invasion, the resistance of the Mujahideen to the fall of the Taliban, is an apologetic for those same immensely resilient women. If at times Hosseini comes close to stereotyping the central characters, that is because as a novelist he has set out with deliberate apologetic intent.
The interweaving of violence, at once intentional and random, domestic and military, with human qualities of love, courage, forgiveness and unselfish kindness, creates throughout the novel a constant tension of low-key menace that at times erupts into catastrophe and loss – and made it hard for me to read on. And through it all two women, thrown together by circumstances at once inevitable and tragic, and yet through which they discover ways of transcending fear, hate and suspicion, find in their relationship a final resolution both redemptive and passionately defiant of the forces that destroy.
I heard Khaled Hosseini interviewed on radio, explaining why he had worked so hard to portray the harsh realities of life for women and children in the recent history of his country. His capacity to portray the inner lives of the two key characters Mariam and Laila, I found uncannily persuasive, unflinching in exploring their aching loss, describing the inner impact of systemic dehumanising treatment, portraying their protective tenderness to their children. There is harrowing realism in the scenes of brutality, but I never found them gratuitous, though at times near overwhelming. Why so much pain? Such scenes were however powerfully convincing, evoking in me responses of deep anger, particularly towards male characters whose religious rigidity or collusion in structures of cultural and social oppression of women, enabled, indeed required, such oppressive treatment systemic and sanctioned. There are times when imaginative literature of this quality is more effective than graphic TV footage – more morallly disconcerting, more emotionally galvanising. If that makes it a lesser novel, then perhaps there are times when the requirements of making truth heard are more urgent than the demands for technical literary excellence
Written by an Afghan novelist, set in contemporary international events, using the microcosms of two women caught up in personal tragedies that intersect, confronting in vivid storytelling the realities behind that evil euphemism "collateral damage", this is a novel intentionally making a point. Yet doing so not with comic-strip caricature, but by imaginative realism, creative empathy, and profound moral maturity in the handling of the unpredictable ambiguities and urgent choices that war and violence force on the innocent.
For these reasons, despite its apologetic tone, I still think this is a great novel – because it is a story hard for economically comfortable, culpably cocooned Western minds to credit unless it is writ large in the emotional drama of suffering and redemption. By which I mean it deals with immense issues of what it means to be human in a brutal world, to endure and sacrifice for the sake of the other. Great also because it is I believe a morally honest book. Under the Mujahideen and the Taliban the brutal violence against women, the suppression of women's educational and cultural potential, the warlords' complacency about women and children as necessary casualties on the road to influence and political power, is a story that both needs to be told and needs to be heard. Hosseini is not suggesting the situations in this book are universal in Afghanistan – then or now. But they are not uncommon. The great novelist is as necessary as the great journalists, poets, reporters, photographers and other chroniclers of our times.
I wanted to read several books that would widen my perspective – this one did, and I hope enlarged my capacity to understand, and care, more. The very strangeness of its context and tragedy, took me much deeper into the why of the Incarnation – a world broken but beautiful, where evil often flourishes but where love endures, and God is.