FEMININE POWER AS REPRESENTED IN KHALED HOSSEINI’S THE THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

The silencing and victimization of women have forever been a theme we have come across in many of the works of literature. Not only has this been a food for thought now but has also been a topic much discussed right from the time we have started to protest against this since the early 1960s. Khalid Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the entwined story of two Afghani women, Mariam and Laila, both married to the same truculent man Rasheed. Hosseini's women characters had been the epitome of much oppressed Afghan feminine hood till they realized their power and fought for their identity. This paper attempts to delve into the psyche and lives of these women characters of Hosseini's novel which tries to be the voices of the voiceless, under the clutches of patriarchy, religion and politics and their liberation.