KHALED HOSSEINI'S A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS: A SAGA OF AFGHANISTAN (original) (raw)
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Ideological Essentialization of Afghan Women in Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Batuk
This article analyses the representation of women in Khaled Hoesseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns (2003). This novel foregrounds the Afghan history in the aftermath of the fall of monarchy and the subsequent Russianinvasion, rise of Taliban and the arrival of the US after 9/11. All these events resulted in ethnic cleansing, hunger, mass exploitation, displacement and physical and psychological trauma to the common people especially the poor, women, and children. They brought eternal political instability to the ancient nation. The article uses the feminist lens of interpretation and concludes that the novel presents a graphical picture of Afghan women, their sufferings, their fight against the social and political patriarchy and biasness, their pain, human values and struggle for dignity.
The Afghan Identity Reflected in A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Academia Letters, 2021
This text deals with a modern phenomenon, which is identity. The presented research is set in Afghanistan and is based on an analysis of the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by the Afghan-American physician Khaled Hosseini, who is currently the most famous and popular author writing about Afghanistan. A Thousand Splendid Suns is Hosseini's second novel, which tells the story of two women, Mariam and Laila, from different generations and social classes, whose lives are united by marriage to one man and the war that forced millions to flee abroad. Violence, fear, the injustice treatment of women, and identity issues, as well as faith, hope, the protection of the family and lasting values, are concretized in the struggle for survival. In the presented research, we concentrated on the formation of Afghan identity in the historical context (the Soviet invasion and the Taliban reign), because the history of Afghanistan has greatly influenced its development. Several nations have tried to conquer the country and its people but, in the words of Colin Quinn, an American actor and writer, "Afghanistan is a cemetery of great empires". 1 Moreover, geographically, it is a mountainous country with a harsh climate, in which it can be difficult for foreigners to live or survive. Even Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the British, the Soviets, or NATO forces did not have it easy in Afghanistan. It is necessary to acquaint readers with the recent history of Afghanistan so that they could identify with the fates of the main characters who lived in an unstable, ever-changing, and multi-ethnic society, where the government regime, name and symbols are constantly changing, thus, making it difficult to create a unified national identity. Afghanistan is a "troubled
AFGHANISTAN: HISTORY, CULTURE, AND TRADITION IN A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL), 2021
Afghanistan is a land of multi-cultural diversity, rich tradition with a dominant historical and political background. Hosseini describes the captivating beauty and the traditional values of Afghanistan, also the foreign influences that reform the rich diverse long-established values on the political, religious, or cultural grounds. We are given to understand that Taliban forces people to follow tenants of Islam but they fail to do so and on the contrary, they involve in sexual exploitation of women, brutal murders, human trafficking, and much more. The cultural beliefs of Afghanistan were intermixed with the fundamentalist ideology of the Taliban and modernity of the West which resulted in multi-culturalism and loss of traditional ethos. War and invasions dragged Afghanistan down to sub-normality instead of development. Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns portrays historical, cultural, and social aspects of Afghanistan through the story of Mariam, Laila, Rashid, and Tariq while tracing the cultural change there by civil war and invasions. Also, Hosseini’s narrative style in A Thousand Splendid Suns voices his western influence in which he upholds the West in the novel and portrays the East as downtrodden.
Our Heritage, 2020
Afghanistan is a land where most women are battered at every step of their life physically, psychologically and emotionally. In familial, social or political aspects, men consider themselves as superior and impose highly unreasonable rules and regulations within and outside the family on women and try their best to disempower them in the patriarchal society of Afghanistan. A few women break these shackles and try to empower themselves and also include many women in their journey. The present paper explores the multifarious ways in which the harsh societal rules limit and demoralize women from leading a life of their choice and also the diverse strategies used by women to combat them in Afghanistan with reference to 'We are Afghan Women-Voices of Hope' and Khaled Hosseini's 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'. The study proposes to explore the desperate efforts of women to ensure their voices are heard and prove their predominant role in the process of reconstruction of the devastated country.
Endurance of Women in Afghan Society in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (Book review)
2020
Women's condition in Afghan society as depicted by Khaled Hosseini in his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns is miserable. This novel focuses on how the women are victims of the patriarchal despotism, and also explores on the endurance as a typical characteristics of women in Afghan society. Khaled Hosseini (2007) depicts the plight of Afghan women realistically in his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. It is about "the tragedy of Mariam's life. Rather it is better to say that this is the unavoidable destiny of many women. A woman is exploited everywhere" (Jana, 2013 P.7). Afghan women are living a pitiable life not only because of patriarchal social structure but also because of the war and crisis even in the 21 century. The women have been treated indifferently and have become major sufferers during the time of Russian invasion in Afghanistan. It is a story of women's sufferings and endurance on the one hand, and hopes and struggle for living on the other. Hosseini...
Central Asia
The paper aims to explore Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns(2007) from the deconstructive perspective of gender construction through the untraditional and challenging role of women in patriarchal Afghan society. Hosseini is one of the acclaimed Afghan-American novelists whose art speaks against the concerns of discrimination and segregation on ethnic, religious and gender basis. His novels are deeply entrenched with his own observations and experiences to portray the grim realities and the woes of Afghan society that is badly torn by the unending wars on its soil. The deconstructive approach challenges the taken-for-granted patriarchal socio-cultural norms of Afghan society represented in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Women characters engage in diverse performances that question the stability of gender construction in the novel. The variability of gender in the novel depends upon performativity of the characters. In their actions, they generate multiple shades of gender identit...
International Journal of Languages and Culture Publisher's Home Page: https://www.svedbergopen.com/, 2022
This paper aims to highlight the conditions of Afghan women in Khaled Hosseini's two novels, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed in which women are seen inferior in a male dominated society. The socio-religious and socio-political conditions of Afghan women led them totally illiterate, poor, inferior, marginalized, and oppressed in post-Soviet era. It also aims to depict the status of Afghan women and their struggles towards the gender discrimination and violence through Hosseini's two selected novels. Previous studies and author's novels were read for data collection and thematic analysis technique was applied in this study to achieve the goals. As a result, in the former novel, Mariam, Laila, and Nana under the male-dominated system suffered some tragic events such as abusive behavior of husband; patriarchy; and loss of freedom. Similarly, in the later novel, Parwana, Pari, and Nila both physically and mentally suffered, viz., women's earlier marriage; selling women for dowry; and women's poor economy.
Reflections of the City of Kabul: Pre and Post-Taliban in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns
BL College journal, 2020
Khaled Hosseini, a refined craftsman of realistic fiction, historicises the city of Kabul before, during, and after the tyrannical Taliban in his masterpiece 'A Thousand Splendid Suns.' The proposed paper aims to locate the city of Kabul as a troupe that evolves and transforms as a commercial door to the middle-east from South Asia, to an ethnic war zone during Soviet occupation, to an Islamic fundamentalist hub after the fall of the USSR with the rise of the Taliban followed by terrorism and Islam phobia and finally culminates in its existing state as a US protégé. The narrative pitted within the political and social transformations mainly surrounds the life and times of the central characters, mostly female-Mariam, Laila, and Aziza-the three generations of women that bear testimony to the changes in Afghanistan and its capital city. The chief male protagonists Rasheed and Tariq are presented in starkly black and white comparisons respectively as the regressive villain and the progressive hero in terms of their acceptance and resistance to the political turmoil and the personal relationships to the women in their lives. Laila's father Babi encapsulates the idyllic history of Kabul as a centre for poetry and architecture that bears the scars of invasions strategically by the Macedonians, Sassanians, Arabs, Moghuls, the Soviets, and after his death, the Taliban and eventually the US. The paper would finally contend that the narrative holds a positive hope of regenerating peace and reformation for the progeny in the city of Kabul as Laila returns from Pakistan with Tariq and the two children Aziza and Zalmai to find sanctuary in this city rich with its cultural heritage despite the bloodshed caused by the Soviet invasion and the rule of the Taliban.
Study of Marginalized Afghan Women in Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini is a living Afghan-born American novelist and physician. He is the author of three bestselling novels such as the The kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed. Hosseini seems to show immense interest towards the past, present and future state of Afghan, his native land in all the three novels. He plants the seed of empathy in the minds of the reader through his delineation of the struggles of the people of Afghan in various perspectives in each of his novels such as the childhood perspective in The Kite Runner, womanhood or feministic perspective in A Thousand Splendid Suns and a perspective of family reunion in And the Mountains Echoed. Hosseini"s second novel A Thousand Splendid Suns is taken for the present study to delineate the factors that marginalize the Afghan women through the social, political and religious restrictions unwillingly forced upon them in reality. Hosseini explores the present state of social exclusion of the Afghan women through the characters of Mariam and Laila in the novel. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love. It is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. The story is a narrative told from the perspectives of the two women characters, Mariam and Laila. Each shows how they were raised, what they lost as the result of war, and how in the end, their strength and enduring hope helped them face their fate.
Journal of emerging technologies and innovative research, 2021
Literature, art and culture are interrelated. They form the basis of independent, original thought and both reflect and manifest the problems and aspirations of a society. Women's rights and liberties have suffered an unstable evolution in Middle East countries for centuries. Through the eyes of two women, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns explores almost forty years of the history of Afghanistan and delves into the loss of women's privileges. The history of Afghanistan is marked by political instability, particularly during the last 30 years of prolonged war, infrastructure collapse, and restrictive political regimes. The situation of women in Afghanistan has been dismal during this period. Their status was undermined during the Soviet occupation and under subsequent regimes; in fact, the violation of Afghan women's human rights is considered to have been at its worst in the early 1990s. Hosseini's novel A Thousand Splendid Suns is taken for the present study to delineate the factors that marginalize the Afghan women through the social, political and religious restrictions unwillingly forced upon