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Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Genre: Contemporary, Historical Fiction
First Publication: 2007
Language: English
Major Characters: Laila, Mariam, Rasheed, Tariq
Setting Place: Herat and Kabul, Afghanistan
Theme: History and Memory in Afghanistan, Suffering and Perseverance, Shame and Reputation, Love, Loyalty, and Belonging, Gender Relations and Female Friendship
Narrator: The story is told in the third person, alternating between Laila’s and Mariam’s point of view
Book Summary: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding—that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms.
It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives—the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness—are inextricable from the history playing out around them.
Propelled by the same storytelling instinct that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once a remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship.
It is a striking, heart-wrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love—a stunning accomplishment.
This is my second book of Khaled Hosseini . I loved The Kite Runner and this book is also beautifully written and is a masterpiece. The Story telling is perfect and at no moment I feel bored or thought of putting it away.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini stretches over decades and talks about the Afghan history in which the soviets invaded and the Taliban took over and time after that. The writer makes it easy to picture the areas of Afghanistan and the Afghani culture. The story in this book is told from the perspective of the two women named Mariam and Laila. Both the women with a completely different childhood but fate brought them together.
“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
The characters in A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini are fictional. But the story of the life of Laila and Mariam is too heart breaking and I felt sad for the whole day while reading this. Makes me grateful for the life I am living but saddens me when I think of there are many people out there who still have tragic lives similar to Mariam and Laila.
The writer talks about many important topics such as how the war destroyed lives of so many innocent Afghanis which were forced to go to different countries to find shelter. The rules in the society which restricted the freedom of the women. They violence that they had to endure. Also about the women education in Afghanistan, where they were restricted to go to schools. I loved the character of Laila’s dad who believed and had a dream of educating his daughter.
“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated…”
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini involves everything and is very interesting to read but could be quite depressing and sensitive to some readers. Many situations are very upsetting. But for those who are okay with all this then is totally worth it to read it.
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A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
by Khaled Hosseini ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 22, 2007
Another artistic triumph, and surefire bestseller, for this fearless writer.
This Afghan-American author follows his debut ( The Kite Runner , 2003) with a fine risk-taking novel about two victimized but courageous Afghan women.
Mariam is a bastard. Her mother was a housekeeper for a rich businessman in Herat, Afghanistan, until he impregnated and banished her. Mariam’s childhood ended abruptly when her mother hanged herself. Her father then married off the 15-year-old to Rasheed, a 40ish shoemaker in Kabul, hundreds of miles away. Rasheed is a deeply conventional man who insists that Mariam wear a burqa, though many women are going uncovered (it’s 1974). Mariam lives in fear of him, especially after numerous miscarriages. In 1987, the story switches to a neighbor, nine-year-old Laila, her playmate Tariq and her parents. It’s the eighth year of Soviet occupation—bad for the nation, but good for women, who are granted unprecedented freedoms. Kabul’s true suffering begins in 1992. The Soviets have gone, and rival warlords are tearing the city apart. Before he leaves for Pakistan, Tariq and Laila make love; soon after, her parents are killed by a rocket. The two storylines merge when Rasheed and Mariam shelter the solitary Laila. Rasheed has his own agenda; the 14-year-old will become his second wife, over Mariam’s objections, and give him an heir, but to his disgust Laila has a daughter, Aziza; in time, he’ll realize Tariq is the father. The heart of the novel is the gradual bonding between the girl-mother and the much older woman. Rasheed grows increasingly hostile, even frenzied, after an escape by the women is foiled. Relief comes when Laila gives birth to a boy, but it’s short-lived. The Taliban are in control; women must stay home; Rasheed loses his business; they have no food; Aziza is sent to an orphanage. The dramatic final section includes a murder and an execution. Despite all the pain and heartbreak, the novel is never depressing; Hosseini barrels through each grim development unflinchingly, seeking illumination.
Pub Date: May 22, 2007
ISBN: 1-59448-950-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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by Khaled Hosseini ; illustrated by Dan Williams
by Khaled Hosseini
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THE NIGHTINGALE
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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THE LAST LETTER
by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 2019
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ ( Wilder , 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
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by Rebecca Yarros
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Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns
By Michiko Kakutani
- May 30, 2007
A Thousand Splendid Suns By Khaled Hosseini 372 pages. $25.95. Riverhead Books.
It's not that hard to understand why Khaled Hosseini's first novel, "The Kite Runner" (2003), became such a huge best-seller. The novel read like a kind of modern-day variation on Conrad's "Lord Jim," in which the hero spends his life atoning for an act of cowardice and betrayal committed in his youth. It not only gave readers an intimate look at Afghanistan and the difficulties of life there, but it also showed off its author's accessible and very old-fashioned storytelling talents: his taste for melodramatic plotlines; sharply drawn, black-and-white characters; and elemental emotions.
Whereas "The Kite Runner" focused on fathers and sons, and friendships between men, his latest novel, "A Thousand Splendid Suns," focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women.
Like its predecessor, the new novel features a very villainous villain and an almost saintly best friend who commits an act of enormous self-sacrifice to aid the hero/heroine. Like its predecessor, it attempts to show the fallout that Afghanistan's violent history has had on a handful of individuals, ending in death at the hands of the Taliban for one character, and the promise of a new life for another. And like its predecessor, it features some embarrassingly hokey scenes and some genuinely heart-wrenching ones that help redeem the overall story.
Hosseini, who was born in Kabul and moved to the United States in 1980, writes in utilitarian prose and creates characters who have the simplicity and primary-colored emotions of people in a fairy tale or fable. The sympathy he conjures for them stems less from their personalities than from the circumstances in which they find themselves: contending with unhappy families, abusive marriages, oppressive governments and repressive cultural mores.
In the case of "Splendid Suns," Hosseini quickly makes it clear that he intends to deal with the plight of women in Afghanistan, and in the opening pages the mother of one of the novel's two heroines talks portentously about "our lot in life," the lot of poor, uneducated "women like us" who have to endure the hardships of life, the slights of men, the disdain of society.
This opening quickly gives way to even more soap-opera-ish events: after her mother commits suicide, the teenage Mariam - the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, who is ashamed of her existence - is quickly married off to a much older shoemaker named Rasheed, a piggy brute of a man. Rasheed forces Mariam to wear a burqa and treats her with ill-disguised contempt.
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BookBrowse Reviews A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Thousand Splendid Suns
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- May 24, 2007, 384 pages
- Nov 2008, 384 pages
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A chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship and love from the author of The Kite Runner
Unsurprisingly, A Thousand Splendid Suns , Khaled Hosseini's follow up to The Kite Runner , has received very wide review coverage. You'll find reviews from about a dozen different critics at BookBrowse (as always abbreviated to the reviewer's essential opinion to avoid both plot spoilers and repetition). Some critics love it, some are lukewarm, but even those who write less than glowing reviews have to admit that, whatever Hosseini's literary weaknesses might be, he does write very compelling storylines and is indisputably one of the world's nicer human beings. Having viewed Afghanistan through the lives of two men in The Kite Runner , Hosseini turns his attention to the lives of two women whose stories start at very different points but converge about half way through the book, at which point the tale starts to take on a real sense of momentum and authority. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a more ambitious novel than The Kite Runner , with a wider and deeper historical and cultural scope that illuminates the last three decades of Afghan history during which the country has been inflicted by coups and counter-coups, an anti-Soviet jihad, civil war, warlord and Taliban tyranny, and post 9/11 conflict. What makes it so approachable are its universal themes of love, friendship, betrayal and redemption that affirm the humanity of ordinary Afghans while revealing the horrors of the society they live in. Because of recent events almost all of us are more familiar with Afghanistan than we were a decade ago, but it is difficult to feel a connection with a place that we know only through news reports. A Thousand Splendid Suns gives us a window into the heart and soul of the ordinary Afghan people while condemning the governments and groups that have brought the country to its knees, enabling us to imagine how we would react if the wheel of fate had placed us in the position of one of the book's characters. Cynical readers may find A Thousand Splendid Suns a little too melodramatic and sentimental for their tastes. However, what redeems these elements is that, when viewed individually, nothing that happen to Mariam or Laila is implausible in a society that places women so low in the pecking order; where oppressive cultural mores ensure that, however lowly a man's status might be in the community, he can be a despot in his own home. This reviewer started off cynical but was entirely won over by the end - starting the book in the evening and waking up before dawn to finish it, reading by fading flashlight as the sun rose and the pages blurred through the tears.
More Information If you want to know more about the lives of women in Afghanistan, read Veiled Courage , an inspiring book about the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan ( RAWA ), whose clandestine activities defied the forces of the Taliban and who continue their work in Afghanistan today supporting projects in schools, orphanages, hospitals, providing literacy programs, food distribution and more. Another charity that helps people in Afghanistan and Pakistan is Greg Mortenson's Central Asian Institute which builds schools in rural parts of both countries. Read his inspiring story in Three Cups of Tea . Another well reviewed book is Kabul in Winter (2007) by relief worker Ann Jones who reports that an estimated 95 percent of women in Kabul are victims of domestic violence. If you've been considering reading The Kabul Beauty School , or have read it and are planning to recommend it to others, please first read this news story . For more about Khaled Hosseini and his books, see his biography at BookBrowse, and the two separate interviews in which he discusses The Kite Runner (2003) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007); his experience growing up in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban; the role of women in Afghan society; how Afghans view the USA, and much else. We also have reading guides for both books. Did you know? The title of A Thousand Splendid Suns comes from a poem about Kabul by Saib-e-Tabrizi, a seventeenth-century Persian poet, who wrote it after a visit to the city left him deeply impressed. Hosseini is a US goodwill envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and is presently working with the organization on the Aid Darfur campaign . He hopes that his future work with the agency will take him to Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. A movie based on The Kite Runner was filmed in China in 2006 and released in 2007. A movie based on A Thousand Splendid Suns is scheduled for release in 2009.
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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, a thousand splendid suns.
When a first novel sells more than four million copies in the United States and remains on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years, it's understandable that expectations for the author's second work will be high. Four years after the explosive success of THE KITE RUNNER, Khaled Hosseini returns with another novel set in his native Afghanistan, with even its cover art reminiscent of the earlier book. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS contains many of the riveting elements that made its predecessor a volume that passed from person to person with the urging, "You've got to read this book." To that extent, it no doubt will please admirers of THE KITE RUNNER, but its intense focus on the plight of Afghanistan's women makes it a strikingly different work.
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS tells the story of two Afghan women --- Mariam and Laila --- depicting their lives in the final quarter of the last century and the first few years of this one, as their country experiences two foreign invasions, civil strife, drought and famine. The two serve as proxies for the women of this troubled land, who have been victimized by most of those in power over that period, most notably the Taliban, whose religious fanaticism placed women in a status little better than that of slaves.
"A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS is an absorbing novel that is not afraid to tackle challenging subject matter in an intelligent and thoughtful way. For that reason alone, it deserves the wide audience it undoubtedly will secure."
Mariam, the elder of the two, is a harami , the illegitimate daughter of Jalil, a prosperous businessman from the city of Herat and one of his housekeepers. At the age of 15, her father arranges a marriage to Rasheed, a Kabul shoemaker. Although Rasheed quickly establishes his control over the young woman, their union is relatively placid until it becomes apparent after several miscarriages that she'll never bear Rasheed the son he covets. Rasheed's dominating behavior quickly escalates into constant verbal and physical abuse that brutalizes Mariam and ages her far beyond her years.
Laila is a Kabul native whose life intersects with Mariam's and Rasheed's after her parents are killed in a rocket attack as the family prepares to flee the country to join the growing body of Afghan refugees in Pakistan in the early 1990s. When the couple comes to her aid, she's approximately the same age as Mariam at the time of her marriage to Rasheed, and it appears their efforts are motivated by genuine concern for the young woman. Soon, however, it becomes clear that Rasheed sees in her the opportunity to create the family he was unable to have with Mariam, and he weds Laila and brings her into the household.
Laila bears Rasheed two children, while she and Mariam live at first in a wary relationship under the increasingly tyrannical domination of their husband. In some of the book's most lyrical passages, Hosseini portrays Laila's effort to break through the wall of resentment that distances Mariam from her. When she does, the women unite in a profoundly moving way to face their common enemy.
Khaled Hosseini is a classical storyteller who has clearly demonstrated his talent for crafting tales whose effective, if occasionally melodramatic, plotting and compulsive readability seduce readers --- especially those with scant knowledge of their exotic setting --- from the first page. In this case, he brings those talents to bear to expose the persistent subjugation of women that has marred much of modern Afghan history. At the same time, his determination to make that case contributes to what may be the novel's only notable flaw: the relative lack of complexity in the portrayal of its main characters. Mariam and Laila consistently display saint-like fortitude and courage in enduring almost lifelong persecution. Rasheed is so irredeemably evil it's hard to endure him for the length of time he serves as the novel's dominant male character. A greater degree of subtlety in sketching these characters would have made A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS an even more impressive work.
Near the end of the novel, Laila reflects that "every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief." With ongoing combat, a flourishing drug trade and even fears of a resurgent Taliban, if Khaled Hosseini chooses to maintain his focus on the tragic story of the Afghan people, one senses he won't run out of compelling material anytime soon. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS is an absorbing novel that is not afraid to tackle challenging subject matter in an intelligent and thoughtful way. For that reason alone, it deserves the wide audience it undoubtedly will secure.
Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg( [email protected] ) on February 24, 2011
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- Publication Date: May 22, 2007
- Genres: Fiction
- Hardcover: 372 pages
- Publisher: Riverhead
- ISBN-10: 1594489505
- ISBN-13: 9781594489501
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
By khaled hosseini, a moving, heart-breaking, powerful story of survival.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini tells the story of two Afghan women whose lives are molded and refracted in the tumult of events in recent Afghan history — the Soviet invasion beginning in 1979, the Civil War, the reign of the Taliban, and the beginnings of the Karzai administration.
It’s a powerful, moving, tragic and heart-wrenching story, but one that’s also infused with love, empathy and hard-won compassion. And while it brings in and envelops complicated subjects like women’s rights, Shari’a law, and the bond between mothers and their children, at the heart of it is a story of the friendship between and struggles of two women in the midst of obstacles, loss and war.
Mariam is a harami — the illegitimate child of a well-respected businessman in Herat. She is raised by her disgraced mother in a village at the outskirts of the city. When her mother kills herself, she’s briefly and reluctantly taken in by her father, but Mariam is then quickly married off to a much older man in Kabul, where much of the story takes place. Later, we meet Laila, who is a younger, precocious, well-educated girl in Kabul. Laila and Mariam come into each other’s lives when, in the midst of the Civil War, Laila’s house is bombed, resulting in her parents’ deaths.
In the novel, the modern tendencies of Kabul, where women are educated and work in professions and have government posts, clash against the tradition and rigidity of older customs and Islamic fundamentalism; the political leanings of various ethnics groups in Afghanistan – the Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, etc. – are seen chafing against one another; but most of all, the novel depicts people struggling to get by — it’s about compassion, humility and empathy, and it describes people finding a way forward and changing because of it.
The book is, quite frankly, very good. It paints a sweeping yet refined tale, with uncomplicated and elegant narration. Hosseini is a very good storyteller, but even more than that, he someone who tells his story with the simple confidence of someone who has a clear vision of a story that he wants to tell.
I really enjoyed this book, even if it made me cry about a dozen times. The Afghanistan Hosseini describes is factually the same as the one you can read about in the news, but it comes from such a nuanced and very human perspective that it seems almost unrecognizable. Hosseini’s Afghanistan is engaging and real and relatable, sometimes delightful, sometimes tragic. I highly, highly recommend giving this a read.
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I completely agree with your assessment of this book! Such a powerful, heart-wrenching and richly told story.
I totally agree! Thanks for dropping by!
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