Gender Oppression and Patriarchy in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

The present paper focuses the novel Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Sun and it talks about the harsh laws and injustices against women in Afghanistan.  Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-born American novelist and physician. He has published three novels. These three novels are partly set in Afghanistan and his novels contain Afghan protagonists. Hosseini addresses the mindset in patriarchal societies whereby women are considered to be belongings and property of their husbands. Through these novels, we clearly understand the insight into the lives of women who have been dominated and treated as the second-rate sex.  In Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, he holds nothing back from patriarchal marriage laws and abusive husbands are brought into the light. This  novel centers on two women, Mariam and Laila, how their lives become intertwined after a series of extreme events, and their subsequent friendship and support for each other in the backdrop of Kabul in the 20th and 21st century. In this topic not only express the two lives but also it represents the whole Afghan women during 20^th century in Afghanistan