A Thousand Splendid Suns

630 pages

English language

Published Nov. 25, 2008

ISBN:: 978-0-7475-8589-3

(1 review)

In his brilliant debut, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini mesmerized us with his evocative portraits and beautiful bittersweet story. Now he returns to tumultuous Afghanistan to tell the tale of an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love...

The child of an illicit affair, Mariam was raised by her single mother on the outskirts of town. At 14, she was sent to Kabul and sold in marriage to Rasheed, a widower decades older than she. But now after twenty years and no offspring, Rasheed takes a beautiful teenager, Laila, as his second wife. While Mariam despises Laila and the baby born months after her arrival, Rasheed's cruelty and the explosive changes in the country soon draw the women together. --front flap

47 editions

fionag11@bookwyrm.social reviewed A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

None

5 stars

Wow, yeah. This book is hard to read, because of the domestic abuse, but if you can stand it, it is also such a fascinating window into the last few decades of Afghanistan's history, powerful, full of tension. You will be rooting for these two women and looking forward to the liberation of Kabul as much as they did - will it be in time to save them? Even more poignant given that we have now gone back to the days of the Taliban. OK, don't despair, there are light moments! - one detail that sticks with me is when the Titanic craze hits Taliban-controlled Kabul - Titanic burkhas!