Hosseini is a refugee, now working in America, who explores the very difficult life of Afghan women who survived these traumatic years: the rejection of women and their illegitimate children; the violence even in Kabuhl against married women and the shutting down of all options for womens’ education and employment by the Taliban.
Some harrowing descriptions of violence make it a difficult book for some readers but this is balanced by a warm hearted examination of the resolute lives of its main female characters and some of the Afghan men who loved them and tried to protect them.
Hosseini describes a fatally flawed country with no hope in sight, yet one that he loves and remembers for the poetry, art and culture of its far off past. A good book to read if you want an inside look at the lives of the people and want to understand why so many have fled as refugees.
Meg Dillon