book review

I just finished reading a Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It is a well written book that describes the fictional lives of 2 women through the last 30 years of Afghanistan history. The story is compelling and does a great job of bringing you into what life has been like for women as regimes have come and gone and the country has been torn apart by war. I expected it to be a really difficult read, and it doesn't shrink from describing the atrocities of the Taliban, but it also isn't gross or too explicit - the squeamish of stomach can read it without fear.
But having read an interview of the author in O magazine, when he mentions that most of the horror stories are real, it is heart breaking to read the book. That's the most powerful aspect of the book: you know that although the book is fiction, it corresponds more closely to reality than say, James Frey's fictitious memoir A Million Little Pieces. In other words, women probably suffered exactly what he described and worse during the Taliban.
A good read for sure. It will draw you in, it will not repulse you, but it will convict you to care for our sisters in Afghanistan.