January 7th, 2008

Did some reading today - my first new book of the new year. It seems I chose well when I picked up Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. Splendid indeed. The book was excellent - I wasn't intending to read much, just a few pages this morning, a taste, if you will... the next thing I knew, I was turning the final page.

Not necessarily the kind of book I'd pick up on a regular basis, as my taste for historical fiction runs to the Elizabethan era and before, and this was about far more recent history. Specifically, the story gives a very immediate, personal take on the violent history (and misogyny) of Afghanistan over the past three decades. Not a time and place I know well, in spite of its presence in the news for the last several years. Truth be told, it's a history I know by the very barest of bones; in my mind, I hold an image of Soviet tanks rolling through city streets, National Geographic's girl with startlingly green eyes, and the sketchiest notion of just how completely the Taliban suppressed women's rights. This book filled in some of my blanks, and held me riveted as it did so.


Now I've gotta back up and read his first book, The Kite Runner. I understand that's just as good. Meanwhile, this one's worth revisiting down the line. I will definitely have to re-read.