What I'm Reading

A Thousand Splendid Suns is the story of two Afghan women and how their lives are affected by the circumstances of their culture and the wars of their homeland. It's an incredibly ambitious idea and an amazing novel, but I'm not sure how well Hosseini keys into Womanhood, as it were. Although I'm not sure how qualified I am to judge what is Muslim Womanhood, so take that for what it's worth.

In case you haven't been following the saga, Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, has been made into a movie but there is drama surrounding the release. The book is about (among other things) the friendship between two boys--one a (ethnic majority) Pushtun and one a (minority) Hazara. They are very close friends for their entire lives, until one day when the Pushtun boy watches a gang of other Pushtun boys rape the Hazara boy without coming to his friend's aid. The incident has obvious consequences for the friendship, but also makes a profound statement about the depth of the ethnic divide in Afghanistan. Although the scene in the movie does not actually simulate the rape, it does make it clear what has happened and apparently this is so taboo in Afghanistan that the movie company has offered to relocate the actor (a Muslim living in Afghanistan) and his family, out of concerns for their safety.