A Thousand Splendid Suns - Book

I have just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead Books, 2007), the second novel by Khaled Hosseini, author of the best-selling, The Kite Runner, which I read previously and enjoyed. I found this second attempt an extremely interesting novel in several ways.

First, I cannot decide if I can truthfully say I “enjoyed” it. I did finish reading it, fascinated in a strange way, rather like being witness to a series of horrible events that, while horrifying, also have a fascination about them that makes it impossible for you to give up watching, or, in this case, reading. While the book is a novel, it is also, in a way, a kind of horror story.

I guess you could say it escapes being a horror story because it gives the impression of being a true story, that is, one not created for the express purpose of the horror, but pretending to be real, deals with actual (if fictional) events. For fiction writers things do not have to be “real,” but, rather, “realistic.” That is, they must achieve verisimilitude. Hosseini, I think, is a master at this. You certainly read this novel as if it is a true and believable story, even if it is classed as fiction.

This book is also interesting in that it is written across gender lines. That is, it is a male author, attempting to offer accounts of the lives primarily of women. That is, he attempts to describe women’s innermost feelings, emotions, thoughts, psychology, dress, and so on. Ordinarily I am very skeptical of this kind of writing. But here, again, I find myself not questioning his descriptions of those not of his own gender. I have no way of truly knowing whether he is true to these emotions, etc., or not, but while reading about them, I find no reason to question his descriptions. He seems to me to have pretty well mastered the demands of cross-gender description.

More importantly, and even more difficult I think, is writing for a cross-cultural audience. That is, Hosseini is an Afghan, writing in English about Afghanistan, for an English speaking audience. This form of writing can be fraught with peril, not the least of which has been termed by William Gass, the problem of “nonfictitious nature:”

“Nonfictitious nature has its way about a good deal. If in a story it rains, the streets usually get wet; if a man is stabbed, he bleeds; smoke can still be a sign of fire, and screams can be sounds of damsels in distress. No novel is without its assumptions. It is important to find them out, for they are not always the same assumptions the reader is ready, unconsciously, to make…Do we any longer dare to infer goodness from piety, for example, evil from promiscuity, culture from rank?” (W.H.Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life, N.Y., 1970).

If one were a serious critic, rather than just an ordinary reader like me, or if one were seriously interested in the psychology of Afghans, or, if one was already very conversant with Afghan personality and culture, I believe there may be some reasons to analyze this book following these strictures. That is not a task I set myself, nor, with my casual reading, can I offer any specific example for examination.

There is at least one more potentially serious problem with writing cross-culturally. It has to do with writing down to the audience and didactism. This can be seen in the following criticism of another work of this type, James Houston’s novel, The White Dawn:

“I should say at once that I enjoyed this story, or essay on Eskimo cultural anthropology, or whatever it is, but I did not enjoy it as a novel…Houston slips an extraordinary quantity of anthropological information into his story: how igloos are built and a bed made of skins, how polar bears are killed and a shaman works his magic. But, as I say, about the time of the walrus hunt I realized that the information was the point of the book. The novel’s didactism finally becomes intrusive--to the point where the story, finally, counts for little” (P.S.Prescott, Review of the White Dawn, Newsweek, 4-26-71).

Reading Hosseini’s novels, one does learn quite a lot about Afghan society and culture, and perhaps about Afghan personality and ethos, if his stories are based even loosely on realities of Afghan life. But his aim is not to offer ethnographic details, but stories. To his credit, he does not fall into the trap of didactism and you do not get the sense that the information accompanying the stories is intrusive. In rare moments he perhaps skirts this tendency, but I did not at any point find it seriously interfering with the elegance of his prose, and the stories certainly do not suffer from it. My only criticism from a literary standpoint (I am hardly a literary critic), is that I think his stories, and particularly the endings, are a bit too contrived. But they are novels, after all.

My problem with this particular book is that I wish I had never read it. I wish it had never been written. I wish it had never have had to have been written. I wish it could not have been written at all. I wish it did not represent what I believe could easily be true of the horrors of Afghan society and culture, especially during these recent years of unremitting violence. Gass would have us believe that authors can achieve verisimilitude simply because of their “godliness:” “Authors,” he says, “are gods—a little tinny sometimes but omnipotent no matter what, and plausible on top of that, if they can manage it.” (1970). But in fact, authors are not gods. They do not create something out of nothing at all. I wish Hosseini was simply telling us fairy tales that he makes up merely out of his writer’s imagination, but I cannot believe that. These stories can never truly have happy endings, no matter how contrived.