A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini and Harmattan, by Gavin Weston Okay, so chronologically these are not my two most recent readings. I finished Harmattan today but I can’t remember how long it’s been since I read A Thousand Splendid Suns. These days I recall events as “before and after the move” so I am sure I read it last year before October, before we moved to this part of Northern Ireland. Similarities? Both stories take place in the Muslim world (Afghanistan for A Thousand Splendid Suns, Nigeria for Harmattan), in countries ridden by war, poverty, and death. Both novels revolve around young girls whose lives are maimed by their unfortunate circumstances: war and the Afghan society’s prejudices in Mariam’s case; illness and the Nigerian society’s inability to look after its innocents, in Haoua’s case. In both cases, the girls are left without their mothers’ tender presence and vigilant protection from a young age, to the mercy of ruthless, uncaring, selfish fathers who perceive them as offsprings, but not as in the definition “a …