Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

This is my favourite book. Now let me tell you how I ended up reading it. There was a Model United Nations going on in our school. And one of the committees was called 'The Pakistani All Party Conference'. And the agenda was about Afghanistan. So, while researching on Afghanistan, one of my seniors commented that 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' was a brilliant book relating to the stuff we were researching. So I decided to buy it, as I had heard of it before too. And thus I found one of the most beautiful books ever.
Mariam is a the illegitimate child of Jalil, businessman in Afghanistan, and she lives with her poor mother. When an  untoward incident leaves Mariam motherless, she is sent to live with her loving father, his many wives and her half-siblings. Soon, at the tender age of 15 (I'm 14 :O) she is forced to marry Rasheed, an middle-aged man in Kabul. The other protagonist of this book, Laila, is the daughter of one of  Mariam's new neighbours at Kabul. I will not say more about the storyline. Basically, after this, the Taliban take over Afghanistan, and the rest of this book comes to life, in the most brutal, heart-rending, and realistic way possible. This is not one of those books which will leave you thinking 'Oh, why did soandso have to die, the ending is too sad, boohoohoo'. No, it does not end in a happy way. There are graphic injuries and deaths, tortures, pain, and injustices of every kind. But let me tell you this, the ending will leave you with one thing. Hope. Hope for the world, hope for the real women over the world, who face such monstrous lives, simply because they are women. And, may I slip in, a smile.
Other aspects of the story are just as brilliant. The colourful, lively, descriptions of the bazaars, the food, the places, the hills, the deserts, you can see it in front of you. You can smell the kebabs, you can feel the wind, you can feel Hosseini's Afghanistan.
I am hardly a book critic. I am a teenage girl, who has seen the horrors of the world only on paper or on screen, and has pitied it. But this much I can tell you. 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' has left an impact on me unlike any other book has. Khaled Hosseini, I thank you for writing this book. It has truly changed my life.