Title: A Thousand Splendid SunsAuthor: Khaled Hosseini
First Published: May 22, 2007
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Pages: 372
Genre: Historical Fiction
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
Rating:
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.
Review
If I had to pick one word to sum up this book: it would be powerful. I thought that The Kite Runner was an emotional roller coaster, A Thousand Splendid Suns leaves its predecessor in the dust. This book made me smile, it made me cry, and at times I became so violently angry over the cruel circumstances faced by the book’s heroines that I had to put it down for a while to calm myself. The story utterly destroyed me and shook me to my core. It is rare indeed for a book to make me feel such a wide variety of emotions.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a beautiful historical fiction set to the backdrop in a war torn Afghanistan fresh off the fall of Najibullah’s government. The book takes us through the violent struggle between rival militias that eventually leads to the rise of the Taliban. The story follows first a young girl named Mariam, a bastard child forced with her abusive mother to live secluded in the countryside. Later she is forced into marriage with a much older man obsessed with having another son. The story then picks up with the birth of another young girl named Laila. The book continues to switch narratives between the two women until they are eventually brought together by circumstance. Together the girls face immeasurable hardship, vividly showing the dreadful reality for many women in the middle east.
The overall tone of the novel is intense, with the story taking many heart-wrenching turns. It opened my eyes to a part of the world that I had previously known little about. My childhood in the 1990’s was comfortable and safe, a far cry from the horrors faced by women and children during the same time period on the other side of the globe; it was like stepping into another world.
I’ve found that twice now, I liked the first half of Khaled Hosseini’s books better than the second half. The later plot lines usually seem a little far-fetched to me, but it doesn’t change the overall satisfaction I get from the book. The book covers the topics of the relationship between women, a perfect compliment to The Kite Runner‘s themes of relationships between men. This beautiful book is a masterpiece and the very best of Hosseini’s work. Be prepared to cry though, this one is hard on the emotions.
Quote
“And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat in the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and history at a high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then their homeland had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet Army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States, and in September 1980 moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1988. The following year he entered the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, where he earned a medical degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles and was a practicing internist between 1996 and 2004.
In March 2001, while practicing medicine, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, which was published by Riverhead Books in 2003. That debut went on to launch one of the biggest literary careers of our time. Today, Khaled Hosseini is one of the most recognized and bestselling authors in the world. His books, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed, have been published in over seventy countries and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.
In 2006 Khaled was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Inspired by a trip he made to Afghanistan with the UNHCR, he later established The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.
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