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Mariam, one of two female protagonists, is a quiet, thoughtful child at the start of thebook. Born out of wedlock to a rich and married businessman (Jalil) and his formerhousekeeper (Nana), Mariam resents her mother's strict ways and the fact that she onlysees her father once a week. Mariam's shame at being illegitimate makes her unable tostand up for herself. Miriam - She is the main character of the story. She was born
illegitimately to a wealthy man of Herat and one of his housekeepers. She tries to forceher father to acknowledge her as his daughter, but it leads to the heartache of hermother’s suicide and her own arranged marriage to…….. Mariam’s shame is synonomousto the humiliation she feels for being illegitimate. Use Margalit’s theme of humiliation andquote….
When her mother commits suicide after Mariam runs away at age 15, Mariam is plaguedby guilt that controls her for much of her life, which contributes to her tolerance at beingmarried to the abusive Rasheed.Victimization n Trauma
During her long marriage to Rasheed, Mariam's inability to have children turns her into aresentful, bitter, and fearful woman. Trauma n Humiliaton
This helps her understand her own mother better, and Mariam's life changes with thearrival of Laila, Rasheed's second wife. Through her love for Laila and Laila's children,Mariam is able to fulfill her wish to be a mother and to finally give and receive love.Ethical Redemption through Laila
Major Themes
Ties to Afghanistan
Besides the fear that comes with leaving a known place, the characters also believe that the
violence will subside and that hope offers a vision of a more peaceful future.
Oppression and Hope
The people in the novel often work to retain hope while dealing with the realities of political
and personal oppression. At significant points throughout the novel, characters express theirindividual hopes. For instance, when Mariam asks Mullah Faizullah if she may attend school,her journey of hope begins. For Laila, hope lies in Tariq and an attempted escape from
Rasheed. Most characters walk into such events with high levels of hope for the future, butonce reality sets in, a character's hope is crushed. Not only do these waves of hope provide
the reader with suspense and emotional attachment to the characters, but this cycleappears to reflect the cycles of hope and dashed dreams that Afghan women suffer, time
and time again. The personal stories of hope, moreover, are mirrored in the political hope of the Afghan citizens. With every new ruler, people express their convictions that finally
Afghanistan will be free. Yet, similar to the personal hope of individuals, Afghanistan’s hopeoften turns to despair after the realities of each new regime leave the nation unfree. Use in
the beginning
ShameJalil and Rasheed emphasize the importance of their reputations by doing their best to avoidany shame to their names. Jalil thus takes action by casting Nana out of his house once she
becomes pregnant with his illegitimate child. Jalil also does not keep his promise to takeMariam into town with him. He also marries off Mariam to Rasheed after Nana's death.
For his part, Rasheed notes that he would need to marry Laila because he could not have
her living in his house without some sort of pretense—otherwise, people would gossip abouthim. He also spends beyond his family's budget in order to make it seem that his family has
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wealth. Ironically, both men behave in ways that are ethically shameful. To protect theirnames in order to meet their own ideas of social expectations, they neglect or even abuse
their offspring and wives, sacrificing the welfare of those around them in order to save face.
Pregnancy and Children>Impt Redemption
Hosseini sets up pregnancy as a symbol of hope throughout the novel. Mariam's
pregnancies each offer her an opportunity to be hopeful for the future despite her bleakliving situation. Laila's pregnancy with Aziza allows her to remain positive after she learnsabout Tariq's death. Aziza and Zalmai thus offer light and joy to a story that is otherwise
bleak and dark. Childbirth is painful, and the pain that mothers feel during the variousbirthing scenes reminds us of the sacrifices that parents make in order to bring new life into
the world. The mother’s pain is worth the joy and attachment that she feels once the child isborn.
Additionally, the contrast between fertility and infertility has a traditional meaning: a
woman's value in Afghan society has often been measured by her ability to bear children,specifically boys.
Education of Women
The women in A Thousand Splendid Suns have very different educational experiences.Mariam is tutored by Mullah Faizullah in the Koran, and she learns how to read and write.
Yet, when she asks her mother about going to school, Nana insists that the only lesson thatMariam needs to learn is to "endure." Laila, in contrast, has a father who emphasizes the
importance of her education. Hakim diligently works with Laila on her homework andprovides her with extra work in order to expand her education. He emphasizes that Laila's
education is as important as that of any boy. After the streets of Kabul become toodangerous, he insists on tutoring Laila himself. He comments about the importance of
women attending universities.
Aziza is educated by both Laila and Mariam, who contribute what they know in order to
educate her. Mariam teaches the Koran, and Laila eventually volunteers to teach at herschool. The end of the book feels hopeful in terms of the education of women in that Zalmai
(a boy) and Aziza (a girl) head off to school together.
Marriage Versus True Love
A clear distinction is made throughout the book between true love and marriage. Since themarriages in the novel tend to be forced, they are not likely to be influenced by love. For
Nana, the prospect of marriage was ruined by a "jinn." She remembers the lost prospectfondly. Mariam finds hope in her marriage as something that could lead to contentment and
possibly to love, but the marriage actually devolves into abuse and oppression. Only Lailaescapes the abusive bonds placed on her by Rasheed when she finds true love with Tariq.
The contrasts between forced marriage and true love are obvious once Laila and Tariqfinally are able to marry and live as a family. Daily living in a forced marriage, for Laila,
involved disgust and futile hopes for a better future. With Tariq, in contrast, daily routines
leave Laila content and fulfilled. Sexual relations between Laila and Rasheed werecompletely one-sided, with Rasheed forcing himself upon Laila. With Tariq, however, Laila
finds safety in making love. Perhaps most importantly, Laila felt fearful and restrained with
Rasheed, but she can be honest and brave once she finds true love with Tariq.
Female Bonds
The women forge strong bonds despite the efforts of their husbands and their governmentto reduce women’s power. The bonds differ in nature. For instance, Giti, Hasina, and Laila
form a bond of girlish friendship, but Mariam and Laila form a much more powerful familialbond later in the novel. Nana finds strength from her daughter Mariam, and Mariam finds an
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admirer when she arrives in a Taliban-controlled prison. The novel thus suggests thatwomen have a strong ability to find strength and support in one another. Mariam never
would have gained the strength to fight Rasheed if she had not gained confidence and lovefrom Laila.
Amidst the escalating conflicts of the Middle East, the fates of two Afghani women intertwine as they
are forced into a loveless marriage and must endure the hardships with only hope to live for in ahopeless society. In Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, the tragic theme of oppressedhope is explored as the lives of Miriam and Laila pan out from childhood to death. Through the manyobstacles that are thrown at these women, the hopes that they hold onto are constantly shattered.Hope for acceptance, love, and a better life are among many things that the women of Afghanistanhope in the backdrop of war and danger.
The main character , Miriam, has been through much more than children her age and one of thoseexperiences is the anticipation for acceptance. At a young age, Miriam is recognized as an illegitimatechild of Nana and Jalil. Her mother referrers to her as a harami, and Jalil's wives look upon her withcold stares of disdain. Jalil, with his idealistic world, was the only person that Miriam feels loved her and could accept her. Therefore, when she asks Jalil to bring her to the cinema and watch Pinoccichio,and to develop relationship outside the kolboa, Jalil reluctantly accepts. Alas, he doesn't take her to
the cinema in fear of his wives and the social structures that frown upon it. Ultimately, Miriam's hopesto be accepted by her father are dashed, forcing her to realize the truth of the situation. Not only didher father not accept her, but Miriam felt that her husband, Rasheed, had not truly accepted her as hiswife later on in the novel. After the 'honeymoon stage' of Miriam and Rasheed's marriage, Miriam hasa miscarriage during pregnancy. Thus, Miriam feels that the earlier hope for acceptance is beingcrushed once again.
Despite the marriage arrangements of Afghani culture, many women aniticpate for a nuptial filled withlove. Nana is like many women, and hope that Jalil convinces his wives to marry her and supportMiriam. Nonetheless, Nana did not receive the marriage she wanted with Jalil. Nana was not the onlyone to suffer through the hardship of a shattered hope of love, but Laila also experiences it. Beforeleaving Kabul for Pakistan, Tariq, yells to Laila that he will come back for her, filling her with hope of amarriage of love. However, she is forced to sacrifice that hope when she marries Rasheed, thehusband of Mariam, in order to sustain a proper upbringing for her child that she had with Tariq.However, her hope is completely shattered when an unknown man comes to the house and to tellLaila that Tariq has been killed by a bomb, leaving Laila distraught and hopeless.
The hope for a better life is always regarded throughout the novel. Earlier in the novel, Hakim, Laila'sfather, urges the family to leave the terrible and dangerous streets of Afghanistan. The hope to leaveand start a new life is crushed by the bomb that kills Laila's mother and father, leaving her alone. In another instance, after the two women form a kinship, Laila tells Miriam of her plan to escapeinto Pakistan. In which, they go to the bus station and pay a man to play the role of the women'scousin. However, the man betrays the women and tells the guards of the women's escape. In turn, thewomen and children are cart to the police station where they are to be questioned. Ironically, thewomen try to escape a life of hardship only to return to that very same life with more abuse and
contempt.
The book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is riddled with oppressed hope of the women and children tothe people of Afghanistan and the unstable politics that is occurring at that time. This tragic novel is agreat depiction of expectations and rejections.
For conclusion
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“Maybe you should write about Afghanistan again.… Tell the rest of the world what the Taliban are doing to our
country.” In his best-selling first novel, The Kite Runner (2003), Khaled Hosseini’s protagonist, Amir,
responded awkwardly to this suggestion. “I’m not quite that kind of writer”, he objected, uneasily.
In his new book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini has become “that kind of writer”. But although Hosseini
is unmistakably driven to tell the rest of the world what has been happening back home, his exploration of
Afghanistan’s relentlessly gut-wrenching recent past is not confined to the notoriously repressive regimeinstituted by the Islamist Taliban on their arrival in Kabul in 1996. A Thousand Splendid Suns spans decades of
Afghan hardship and strife. It opens in 1964, in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city, and closes in Kabul, in
2003. It catalogues the successive eras of the reign of King Zahir Shah, Mohammed Daoud Khan’s Republic,
communist governance, internecine strife between various mujahideenfactions after the withdrawal of Soviet
troops, and the arrival of the Taliban. The narrative stays with its protagonists as they wait for the end of the war
between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, and as they follow the bombing of Afghanistan by the United
States in the aftermath of 9/11. It also features the arrival of a UN peacekeeping force and the installation of
Hamid Karzai as interim president in 2002. The consequences of these ceaseless upheavals are registered in
Hosseini’s tale of lives devastated by wave after wave of brutal misrule, ravaged again and again by
incommensurable extremities of pain and grief.
While The Kite Runner was almost entirely devoted to the depiction of the world of boys and men, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a book about the lives of women in Afghanistan’s deeply patriarchal society. From its opening
page, the novel relentlessly exposes the injustices to which women are subjected. The story has two
protagonists: Mariam and Laila. This double focus imparts breadth and balance to Hosseini’s representation of
the problems faced by women across the country. Mariam is a harami, the illegitimate daughter of an already
thrice-married rich man, forced to live in shame and secrecy on the outskirts of Herat. When her mother
commits suicide, Mariam, aged 15, is promptly married off to Rasheed, an ageing and brutal shoe-maker based in
Kabul. With Mariam’s arrival in the Afghan capital, the narrative shifts its focus to Laila, whose beginnings in
life, in a house just down the street from Mariam’s, have been comparatively fortunate. Born into a loving and
educated family, Laila benefits from the unprecedented opportunities provided for women under the Soviet
occupation. As her father remarks, “Women have always had it hard in this country, Laila, but they’re probably
more free now, under the communists, and have more rights than they’ve ever had before.” Laila is sustained by
her close friendship with her neighbour and classmate Tariq, who lost a leg to a landmine at the age of five: when
Laila is bullied by local boys, he defends her with “his unstrapped leg raised high over his shoulder like asword.” But no life in this novel is left unmarked by the scars of war, and Laila’s precarious happiness begins to
unravel as news arrives of the deaths of both her mujahideen brothers at the hands of the Soviets. Kabul soon
explodes into civil war. Friends leave or die, blown apart by rockets on streets nearby. When a rocket kills both
her parents, Laila, who only just survives, is taken in and nursed back to health by Mariam and her husband. But
Rasheed, it soon emerges, has ulterior motives, and exploits Laila’s physical and emotional vulnerability to
pressure her into becoming his second wife. From this point on Mariam and Laila’s lives become inextricably
linked. The form of the novel responds to these new circumstances: Hosseini’s narrative alternates between the
two women’s perspectives. The relationship is a rocky one at first, but Rasheed’s domestic violence, and the
birth of Laila’s daughter, Aziza, forge a bond which eventually leads to an act of absolute self-sacrifice on the
part of one friend for the sake of the other.
In the opening pages of the book, Mariam’s mother had warned: “There is only one, only one skill a woman like
you and me needs in life… It’s this: tahamul . Endure.” Her cynical admonition turns out to be a tragicallyaccurate forecast of the trials that await Mariam and Laila as wives to Rasheed. The wearing of the burqa is the
first of the changes required by Rasheed: “For your own protection, naturally. It is best.” Both women experience
the strangeness of seeing the world through a mesh screen. Hosseini’s representation of these episodes is
impressively even-handed given the book’s mission to raise awareness about the injustice of such male
prerogatives. He does not, as might have been expected, blankly dismiss the burqa as an unacceptable patriarchal
imposition. Indeed, within a page of Mariam’s first burqa-clad outing, Mariam discovers, to her surprise, that the
anonymity the garment provides, and the privacy it affords from prying eyes, are also comforting. Mariam and
Laila are subjected to frequent domestic abuse. After one dreadful beating, Laila reflects that before life with
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Rasheed, she “would never have believed that a human body could withstand this much beating….” Horrific
scenes punctuate the narrative with unremitting regularity. When pregnant, Laila is so terrified that she might
not be able to summon love for Rasheed’s child that she comes close to using a bicycle spoke to abort the baby.
In another appalling passage, the child is delivered by caesarean section in a women-only hospital in which
doctors are required to operate in burqas, using rudimentary, unsterile equipment, and where there is no
anaesthetic to numb the pain of the operation.
Lighter episodes relieve the narrative tension. Hosseini depicts Laila’s childhood in the same controlled and
touching vein as marked the early chapters of The Kite Runner . An exalting trip to see the Bamiyan Buddhas,
for instance, affects the reader both emotionally and symbolically. There are other reminders of Afghanistan’s
threatened cultural treasure-trove. Laila’s father is moved to tears by a seventeenth-century poem about Kabul.
It is from this ode to the city’s ancient beauty that Hosseini draws his novel’s title: “One could not count the
moons that shimmer on her roofs/ Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.” Later on, in the
midst of the carnage of war and the ravages of drought, it is a relief to read of even little (and imported) joys,
such as the “Titanic fever” that “gripped Kabul” during the summer of 2000. In spite of the ban imposed by the
Taliban, the film finds its way onto the city’s (also illegal) TV screens, and “there was Titanic deodorant, Titanic
toothpaste, Titanic perfume,Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas.”
Like The Kite Runner , A Thousand Splendid Suns ultimately grants its characters and its readers a measure of
hope. As the novel draws to a close, we are treated to an exhilarating wealth of good omens: a baby gives its first
kick in Laila’s womb as dawn breaks on a newly rebuilt orphanage filled with children settling down to morning
lessons. The dream of a peaceful Afghanistan, Hosseini insists, ought not to be relinquished.
This is not a book that works its magic by the strength of its style. Its sentences are clipped, transparent. There
are few rhetorical flourishes, and those often come across as melodramatic self-indulgences, which ill befit the
integrity and intensity of the characters’ suffering. There is something awkwardly sentimental about the way in
which Hosseini constantly hints at later developments, or labours inherently moving moments. Hosseini’s great
strength is plot, and his finely crafted storyline overrides the novel’s stylistic weaknesses. Where The Kite
Runner strained to straddle two worlds (Afghanistan and America), a strong unity of place adds to this novel’s
emotive force by reinforcing the sense of entrapment and claustrophobia that pertains to Mariam and Laila’s
lives. A Thousand Splendid Suns involves the reader deeply in the lives of its characters, by sketching a detailed
picture of their individual pasts and daily routines. The frequent use of Afghan words and phrases ( shaheed for martyr, for instance, or nikka for wedding) adds crispness and poignancy to the depiction of Mariam and Laila’s
world. By the time the plot tightens, the effect of Hosseini’s gradual weaving and meshing of storylines and
personalities is breathtaking, the suspense almost unbearable.
Part of the book’s affective power derives from the immediacy of the reality to which it refers. It is, inevitably,
in dialogue with the myriad news stories and documentaries which provide daily reminders that many of the
fictional events described in A Thousand Splendid Suns are true – and true on a grand scale. Mariam and Laila’s
lives are charted against the backdrop of recognisable political events, including some of the most shocking and
emblematic journalistic images that have come out of Afghanistan in recent years, such as the destruction of the
Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in 2001 and the public executions held by the Taliban in Kabul’s Ghazi
Stadium. Hosseini’s disclaimer that “The village of Gul Daman is a fictional place –as far as I know” draws
attention to the novel’s close correlation of fiction and reality. Similarly, the novel’s Afterword explicitly evokes
the real and ongoing Afghan refugee crisis: it tells of the author’s activities as US envoy to the UNHCR andinvites the reader to find out more by visiting the organization’s website.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a good and important book. It is good because it is a gripping, touching novel; it is
important because it speaks for women who have long been (and many of whom continue to be) condemned to
silence. It is a work committed to helping living people in whatever ways fiction can: it is, in fact, a
humanitarian novel.
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Scarlett Baron is a DPhil student in English literature at Christ Church, Oxford. She is writing about the
influence of Flaubert on James Joyce.
When a first novel sells more than four million copies in the United States and remains on
the New York Timesbestseller list for over two years, it's understandable that expectations
for the author's second work will be high. Four years after the explosive success of THE
KITE RUNNER, Khaled Hosseini returns with another novel set in his native Afghanistan,
with even its cover art reminiscent of the earlier book. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
contains many of the riveting elements that made its predecessor a volume that passed
from person to person with the urging, "You've got to read this book." To that extent, it no
doubt will please admirers of THE KITE RUNNER, but its intense focus on the plight of
Afghanistan's women makes it a strikingly different work.
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS tells the story of two Afghan women --- Mariam and Laila ---
depicting their lives in the final quarter of the last century and the first few years of this
one, as their country experiences two foreign invasions, civil strife, drought and famine. The
two serve as proxies for the women of this troubled land, who have been victimized by most
of those in power over that period, most notably the Taliban, whose religious fanaticism
placed women in a status little better than that of slaves.
Mariam, the elder of the two, is a harami , the illegitimate daughter of Jalil, a prosperous
businessman from the city of Herat and one of his housekeepers. At the age of 15, her
father arranges a marriage to Rasheed, a Kabul shoemaker. Although Rasheed quickly
establishes his control over the young woman, their union is relatively placid until it
becomes apparent after several miscarriages that she'll never bear Rasheed the son he
covets. Rasheed's dominating behavior quickly escalates into constant verbal and physical
abuse that brutalizes Mariam and ages her far beyond her years.
Laila is a Kabul native whose life intersects with Mariam's and Rasheed's after her parents
are killed in a rocket attack as the family prepares to flee the country to join the growing
body of Afghan refugees in Pakistan in the early 1990s. When the couple comes to her aid,she's approximately the same age as Mariam at the time of her marriage to Rasheed, and it
appears their efforts are motivated by genuine concern for the young woman. Soon,
however, it becomes clear that Rasheed sees in her the opportunity to create the family he
was unable to have with Mariam, and he weds Laila and brings her into the household.
Laila bears Rasheed two children, while she and Mariam live at first in a wary relationship
under the increasingly tyrannical domination of their husband. In some of the book's most
lyrical passages, Hosseini portrays Laila's effort to break through the wall of resentment
that distances Mariam from her. When she does, the women unite in a profoundly moving
way to face their common enemy.
Khaled Hosseini is a classical storyteller who has clearly demonstrated his talent for craftingtales whose effective, if occasionally melodramatic, plotting and compulsive readability
seduce readers --- especially those with scant knowledge of their exotic setting --- from the
first page. In this case, he brings those talents to bear to expose the persistent subjugation
of women that has marred much of modern Afghan history. At the same time, his
determination to make that case contributes to what may be the novel's only notable flaw:
the relative lack of complexity in the portrayal of its main characters. Mariam and Laila
consistently display saint-like fortitude and courage in enduring almost lifelong persecution.
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Rasheed is so irredeemably evil it's hard to endure him for the length of time he serves as
the novel's dominant male character. A greater degree of subtlety in sketching these
characters would have made A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS an even more impressive work.
Near the end of the novel, Laila reflects that "every Afghan story is marked by death and
loss and unimaginable grief." With ongoing combat, a flourishing drug trade and even fears
of a resurgent Taliban, if Khaled Hosseini chooses to maintain his focus on the tragic story
of the Afghan people, one senses he won't run out of compelling material anytime soon. A
THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS is an absorbing novel that is not afraid to tackle challenging
subject matter in an intelligent and thoughtful way. For that reason alone it deserves the
wide audience it undoubtedly will secure.
unsand Daughters:
The Role of Marxism and
Women inKhaledHosseini’s
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A Thousand
Splendid Suns
As revolution
began and ended inthe dictatorships of
Iran, PakistanandAfghanistan in
the 1970s and ‘80s,the freedom of
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equality intended
for women of
thenewly-formed
Marxist states didnot last. Muslim
women who wereonce free to walk
thestreets arm-in-arm with other
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women were
banished to their
homes under the
watchfuleye of themen who once
again began todominate them
behind closeddoors as well
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aswithin political
forums.1
Even with equalityripped from their
lives, someMuslim womenin
these Middle
Eastern countries
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found it difficult to
go back to a world
of subservience,de-
feminization, andobjectification.
While a majoritysuccumbed to the
authorityof fundamentalist
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Islamic rule, some
women, in the true
essence of Marxist
resistancedecidedto push back.
2Although previous
analyses of
Marxism and
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women focus
moreon how the
theories of
Marxism andfeminism clash,
3I advocate that the
two belief systems
are instead highly
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comparable and
that Marxism’s
embittered battle
for workingclassequality connects
with the feministsurge against
the dominatingmale faction.The
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relevance of this
analysis is
reflected in the
significance of materialism in
onediasporicwriter’s work that
relates tointerpretations of
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social literary
theory. In Afghan-
American author
Khaled Hosseini’s book
A Thousand Splendid Suns
, thefemalecharacters’
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subdued and
blatant Marxist
actions support my
hypothesis. Thisstudy willconnect
Marxism andfeminism by
accentuating the parallels between
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the class
andgender struggle
facing the book’s
two main femalecharacters
,Mariam and Laila
.
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For Mariam, the
illegitimate child
of a lower class
woman and a prominent Afghan
patriarch,freedomis the ability to
read, write, and play, even though
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her illicitness has
banished her
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