I just finished Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. As with the Kite Runner, I enjoyed it, but I felt slightly dirty afterwards. Hosseini has a gift for storytelling, and an insight into a culture that Americans don't know much about; that alone is enough to make his books absorbing reading. But his prose tends towards the florid. And he doesn't have the courage to let injustice triumph, which makes the whole thing feel a little like Little House on the Prairie in burqas. Sad things happen to everyone, but ultimately his good characters achieve peace, while the cartoon baddies get their comeuppance.
I still like him. But his novels give me the same sensation I get when watching a Steven Spielberg film--a tragic sense of how great this could have been if he would just can the speeches and make the whole thing a little less photogenic.
For some reason, I always imagined Kite Runner being something Orson Scott Card would write.
I like Spielberg's sentimentality... not so much Hosseini's.
Ever read Mahfouz? I'm not trying to let you in on a "Stuff White People Like" authenticity secret - the guy's a Nobel Laureate. I mention him, however, because he is the finest Arab writer of all time if you enjoy reading books about a culture that is important yet most Americans do not understand.
More importantly, Mahfouz is also very, very happy to let misery and injustice win. If there is some sort of melancholy in the Arab soul because of centuries of colonialism and (in some parts) stagnation, the man captures it - you understand the world better after reading the guy, but you also understand why so many runaway bestsellers do just doctor the end to leave you with that warm, fuzzy 'good always triumphs' sentiment...
Yes, the scene of the boy being raped in the Kite Runner was, well, photogenic.
Well, yes, and DDay wasn't particularly pretty either. The point is that they take powerful moments like that and clean them up to make them more palatable--nothing is ever truly tragic, it always works towards the stirring ending.
Well tragedy ended with Willy Loman right. So there is no more tragedy to be had. It has been mined ad nauseum.
Hosseini is something of a fraud. Or..at least he was a willing accomplice in being marketed as something he is not.
Publicity painted Kite Runner as a look at Afghanistan before and after the Taliban, trying to ride the sudden interest in the Taliban. I head Hosseini speak at the local library about Kite Runner and learned that he took a trip there, talked to a lot of people about conditions and witnesses the situation - all AFTER the book was in production and as prep for his speaking tour. He did not go beforehand because it was dangerous and didn't have the resources. He did not do serious discussions with people there or refugees until later, as well.
Yes, it is a work of fiction. But the view of the Taliban is no more authentic than I could get from CNN from my living room in Ohio. It is all made up. It has no original insight at all.
The parts about pre-Taliban Afghanistan are based on his actual memories and I think are very valuable. His insight into growing up in the US after a childhood in Afghanistan are also authentic and worth reading. The whole Taliban bit is just a hyped-up rescue drama from a cliche bad guy with a thin coating of news reports.
" ultimately his good characters achieve peace, while the cartoon baddies get their comeuppance"
My gosh, your problem with his stories is that the endings are too happy? [Spoiler alert - I'll try not to get too specific for those that haven't read the books, but....]
In one book, the joyous ending is that they finally manage to get one smile out of a boy after he had been totally shut down for months/years (I forget how long). Do you think that a child that had been brutalized like that ever really recovers?
And in the other book (the 'happy' one), one of the two main characters is put to death basically for self-defense, after suffering years of abuse. If the sacrifice of 'only' one of the two major characters is just too rosy for you, how did you put up with Atlas Shrugged, where they managed to avoid total extinction and had hopes of rebuilding? Didn't you find that a bit Pollyanna-ish?
And, by the way, having listened to the literally 3 hour rambling radio address at the climax of Atlas Shrugged, nothing in the Hosseini books seemed long in comparison.
It's interesting to hear your opinion, and everyone is different. But I certainly didn't walk away from either of Hosseini's books feeling that there was too little suffering in them.
Patrick -
The author may not have gone back to Afghanistan before his first book was written, but that doesn't mean that he didn't interview refuges. He may not have needed to even formally interview them, since he probably would have known many and heard their stories for years, simply by being part of the Afghan-American community in the US.
the problem with khaled is that he doesnt have any understanding of the muslim mind. His book feels like it has been written by an american visitor to afghanistan.
otherwise the book is good in a kitschy kind of way
to know the muslim mind mahfouz is indeed a good writer. There is another canadian writer M G Vassanji whose book "assasins song" is excellent.