A Thousand Stories Long: Plight of Women in Khaled Hosseini's Novel – A Thousand Splendid Suns

English Literature

Hosseini is one of the acclaimed Afghan-American novelists whose art speaks against the concerns of discrimination and segregation on ethnic, religious and gender basis. His novel A Thousand Splendid Suns (2009) is a story of the invincible and unconquerable spirit of two impregnable and unshakeable women. The book exhibits the political, social, cultural, and religious edifice of Afghanistan where the strict religious laws sabotage the basic human rights of Afghan women. The author introduced many female characters which are victimized, sexually harassed, suppressed by both male and female figures. This paper attempts to investigate the plights and subjugation of women in patriarchal society especially in Afghanistan. It depicts the social, cultural, and political structures that support the devaluation, degradation, and violence endured by the female characters in the novel. The paper also explores how the leading women characters in this book represents the ‘new age women’ who do not remain subjugated and resist injustice and discrimination and thereby reinvent themselves.

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