Hemantkatiyar

It is a story of two Afghani women(Mariam and Laila) to exemplify the status of women in Afghanistan spanning 3 decades --starting from soviet invasion then mujaheddin fight after that Taliban take over and finally US invasion(to find Osama).
The first part of the book starts with introducing a little girl Mariam. Her father is a rich and respected man of Herat(a city in Afghanistan) but her mother was a servant in his home, which led to the pariah of her and her mother. this also entitled her to the tag of harami--a bastard. after some unfortunate she at the age of 15 was married to middle aged man of Kabul. Then the book discribes her story and parallely introduces our second protagonist Laila, the daughter of her neighbor... i should stop here describing the plot because anything further makes the plot discreet.

The primary concer of the author was to portray the condition of Afghani women and to make his point strong he took help of war situation, my only regret after reading the book is is surely is not a mediocre work but it ain't excellent either..i mean if i read a novel which involves a war situation i should get horrifed , u know like it's happening right there another thing of same kind was with charachter introduction, it wasn't supeflous u will get the feel of them but it wasn't like getting under the skin of the charachters(if u are wondering what i mean read some of Somesaut Maugham's woek) anyways book is still likeable and still heartbreaking...

I loved the way author narrates the story he takes u almost deep into the charachter and just when you are getting a feel of charachter baam he flies of the point.It's like taking a fish out of water and just when she is gonna take her last attempt to breath u lower her in water just to take it out again without giving her time to breath. narration is impressive but the only thing that bothers me and this is the same thing that reduced one star was that the events were more like a suspense detective novel scenarios were changing too quickly,

Anyways that's my point of view and i think the author did a pretty good job of conveying his message.