Narratological and Artistic Analysis of Khaled Hossieni’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

This research endeavors to examine narrative strategies used by Khaled Hosseini in his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse Model provides theoretical framework in which textual references from the primary source of data have been analyzed. This research is carried out in qualitative and analytical design. It is not what is being told is important from narratological perspective, rather it is how of what is told that matters most in narratological analysis of a text. Genette’s narrative theory is divided into three main categories voice, tense and mood. First category is divided into sub categories like time, level and person. Hosseini has used past tense and third person narration like many other narratives. In more than this narrative, chronological order is used but at some places analepsis and prolepsis are used using the external focalization because the narrator knows more than the characters of the novel. It found out that the use of various narrative devices was as a peculiar strategy in particular the techniques such as time, duration, frequency, ellipses, and focalization made the novel an impressive piece of writing.