Prior to reading the two books written by Hosseini, that is the ‘Kite Runner and the Thousand Splendid Suns,’ I had a very vague and somewhat distinct idea of what Afghanistan was or what the Taliban meant to the Afghani population. Both the books are poles apart yet deal with the treacherous journeys of its two main protagonists (Amir and Hassan in the ‘Kite Runner’ and Mariam and Laila in ‘The Thousand Splendid Suns’), their abilites to forget and remove the sordid, nocturnal past from their lives and march ahead with optimism and hope in their hearts.

Khaled Hosseini’s representation of Afghanistan is very close to reality. It is here that he has spent half of his childhood. This is the reality of the place he tries to portray in both his books. Howsoever brutal and gruff it might seem to us, the bottom line remains that this is the condition of thousands of men and women living there.

Both his books do have stark contrasts but still thankfully enough they run on similar themes (reminiscent of Jeffrey Archer’s style of storytelling) where he talks about two sections of the society, the rich and the poor, the happy and the not so happy, the modern and the traditional.

It is these contrasts that lends a closer touch to his stories and believability to its characters at least to the Indian readers who have literally grown up watching Bollywood-films based on contrasting elements, kinds like Sita Aur Gita, Karan Arjun where one will always see the privileged and the not-so-privileged siblings or the sati savitri and the punk rocker sisters.

Hence we don’t have to work extra hard to understand his characters which can be visualized very easily. Khaled Hosseini writes from his heart; every time he puts ink on that paper he creates real-life characters which touch each one of us consciously or subconsciously. His characters are so real and rustic yet so dignified and confident that one can’t help but feel this surge of mixed emotions sympathizing with the characters at one level and feeling a strong need to defend them at the other plane.

‘The Thousand Splendid Suns’ has undoubtedly been Khaled Hosseini’s best works where he has chronologically depicted the lives of the two women (Mariam and Laila) belonging to different households with different wishes and ambitions yet what bounds them together is a secret yearning to be free, to liberate themselves. It is this hope for liberation that transmutes into a strong and an everlasting mother-daughter relationship. It is this relationship that gives them the strength to surpass all hurdles and obstacles and emerge victorious in the end.

Khaled Hosseini has beautifully described the pre-Taliban and the post-Taliban period in Afghanistan with more similarities than contrasts. He has subtly portrayed the present condition of the Afghani women and the insensitivities they have to bear everyday under the stoic rule of the Taliban. The women are forced to live a life of suppression and anonymity and are expected to succumb to the sexual and emotional needs of her husband.

He however also clarifies that it is not just the Taliban who should be held accountable for such a derogatory treatment of its women, prior to the Taliban as well Afghani women were subjected to many brutalities, of course that was ignored because at least then the women had the privilege of getting educated, of laughing freely in public and of holding good jobs.

It is a paradox that the Taliban which was created by the Pakistanis and the Americans to chuck out the Russian invaders later backfired at them, formed their own monotonous body, formulated anti-government policies and demanded total control of its citizens. Thus, began an era of destruction, of missiles and bullets, of barbaric activities and of confining of its men and women in self-made jails.

The author has seldom been criticized for showing Afghanistan in a bad light, Many claim that he is no Afghani and just a mere American trying to write frivolous stuff on Kabul. But to all his detractors I have to say that at least he is not sitting there and speculating what’s good or not for the people of Afghanistan.