A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner: A Comparison

For me, The Kite Runner was a revelation. The first half of the book was, without question, much, much better than the second half, yet through and through it remained an excellent read. Shortly after finishing the book, I went to the library in search of another Khaled Hosseini read. I settled on A Thousand Splendid Suns, the book Hosseini wrote following The Kite Runner. While reading The Kite Runner, I complained about how little time was given to women. How can you write a book that critiques Islam while largely leaving out the female perspective? In this way, A Thousand Splendid Suns has, insofar, delivered. In most other aspects, however, A Thousand Splendid Suns has fallen well short of the lofty expectations that I originally set for it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns feels a lot like “The Kite Runner 2.0”. Rather than invent new plot and setting aspects, Hosseini chooses instead to reuse much of what made The Kite Runner so unique and enjoyable. Both books deal with infidelity and its consequences. In The Kite Runner, Baba and Ali keep the fact that Baba fathered an illegitimate son a secret. Hassan, said illegitimate child, lives and appears to all to be Ali’s child. This allows Baba to maintain his good standing in Kabul. The same is true in A Thousand Splendid Suns as a Baba-like figure fathers a girl with a housemaid. Instead of keeping them close, the man (Jalil), builds a hut in the woods for his illegitimate child and his mistress (Mariam and Nana, respectively). Nana goes on to commit suicide. This made me think of Sohrab’s attempted suicide, and also the twisty-turny The Da Vinci Code-esque feel of the second part of The Kite Runner.

That being said, A Thousand Splendid Suns does touch on the female perspective, as Mariam is wedded through arranged marriage to a man she doesn’t know and has no interest in marrying. Many women, as depicted in this book, are truly powerless. They are forced to wear burkas in public, and A Thousand Splendid Suns chronicles rampant domestic abuse. Hosseini also examines the double standard between men and women. Mariam discovers pornography belonging to her husband. This goes strongly against Islam, yet he still forces her to wear the burqa, etc. and follow a strict form of Islam.

All in all,  A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner were eerily similar. Both are good books and I think that had I read his second book first, I may have liked it more than his first. It’s just unfortunate that Hosseini felt the need to make them so unnecessarily similar.

The Kite Runner is fantastic, yet is it AP?

The Kite Runner is an excellent yarn--hardly anyone can deny this--yet is it of sufficient literary merit for an AP English class? While the book does possess many positive qualities, I am inclined to think that it is not deep enough for an AP English class. That being said, I believe that an argument can be made for either side.

The Kite Runner can really be split into two parts. Up until Rahim Khan’s “call to adventure,” where he urges Amir to return to Pakistan to “be good again,” the book seems to demonstrate a somewhat dubious claim to its value as an book worthy of an AP English class. There is certainly some historical worth, as Hosseini manages to quietly depict the changes undergone in Afghanistan’s tumultuous recent history. The increase in Soviet “soft power,” the nonviolent spread of culture and economic influence, is seen rise before the eventual Soviet invasion, and Khaled Hosseini doesn’t miss his chance to compare pre-war Kabul with Taliban-controlled Kabul, yet the book could have gone farther in this respect. Hosseini was limited because the narrator is a man remembering the past, all the way back to his childhood. As a child, Amir was understandably unconcerned with Afghani politics.

In my mind, The Kite Runner’s biggest claim to literary value may come through it’s themes and irony. The theme that, for better or worse, things are not always as they seem is an idea seen countless times in the book. Baba may be the most prominent example, as his god-like respect is tempered when Rahim Khan tells Amir that he fathered an illegitimate son, Hassan. Irony and this theme weave together in the book, as we see that the United States, the grand land of opportunity, is not hugely helpful to Baba and General Taheri, as neither are very wealthy. The appearance vs. reality theme continues with them, as they were once powerful in Afghanistan yet are a gas station manager and jobless, respectively, in the U.S.

While its themes and irony may be of literary merit, its motifs are woeful and the second half of the book devolves in quality. The book shifts from a deep storyline, to a journey myth. With this change, the book becomes a fast-paced read and the plot becomes more dynamic, but these changes come at the expense of the literary value of the book as a whole. The second half feels like a retrogression as The Kite Runner becomes more of a Dan Brown-esque book than one worthy of our attention.

Despite its drawbacks, The Kite Runner is by no means a book without value. It has become one of my favorite books, even if I think its literary merit to be second-rate.