A Thousand Splendid Suns

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Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6 EAN: 9781594489501 ISBN: 1594489505 Label: Riverhead Manufacturer: Riverhead Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 372 Publication Date: 2007-05-22 Publisher: Riverhead Studio: Riverhead
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Editorial Reviews: After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. 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. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Amazingly told...a must read! Comment: A Thousand Splendid Suns is a better book than the kite runner in my opinion. The pages exude genuine feeling...it is amazing how the author captures the full sentiments of betrayal with his candid descriptions. This is the heartbreaking tale of two womem, both struggling to find their way in a world that seems bent on caging them in. Despite the odds, they manage to find their escape from hardship in their mutual friendship. Beautiful... a must read! Customer Rating: Summary: Great second novel Comment: The kite runner was one of the best novels I ever read. A thousand splendid suns comes close, but falls a little short. Which is like saying that Tiger Woods had an off year in 2007. Anything this man writes is worth reading. Customer Rating: Summary: Over-political Comment: The book is a overdramatic tragedy in which most characters are losing. Rasheed, the main bad guy, has more than one wife. Rasheed was a widower before he married Mariam and Laila. The two wives are polar opposite in character - Mariam is loyal while Laila is rebellious. The opposite characters attract and become friends. Both women are foolish not to listen to their mothers, and as a result both women are like slaves under their husband. For example, if Laila, who becomes an orphan in her teens, had listened to her mother, she would not have been impregnated by Tariq and would not have to marry Rasheed. Throughout the book, Laila is hopeful even though she lives a difficult life under a burqa. Mariam repents for the rest of her life because of one mistake she makes. Mariam's stepmothers are straight out of Cinderella. Mariam respects and regards Rasheed until she found porno magazines in his room. As we go on in this book, Mariam has lost so much hope that she becomes almost unhuman. (One of the answers to the questions at the back of the book is Mariam signs her name for her wedding and for the sentence given to her by the Taliban judges towards the end.) Like the movie Titanic, which is mentioned in the book, the book has a few characters who are connected to each other and who are friends with each other (such as Jack and Rose, or Mariam and Laila) set against the backdrop of a disaster, such as the ship sinking or war in Afghanistan which has militiamen fighting. The book shows that Afghanistan is not a good place for even infant girls, such as Laila's daughter Aziza. The best part of the book is Aziza and her relationship with Mariam. The way the author describes Aziza's laughs and smiles is very good. There are some modern women in Afghanistan before militiamen started fighting each other. Islam in Herat plays a more important role the Islam in Kabul. There are racial and ethnic differences in Afghanistan, a poor country, just as in USA, the richest country in the world. The West and Soviet Union are not described much in the book, except when Bush declares war against Taliban. Hosseini's American citizenship could mean he has a condescending relationship towards Afghanistan. The name of the title appears in a poem which describes one moon and a thousand splendid suns. Customer Rating: Summary: Spendid is spendid Comment: Just when I thought it couldn't get any better than "The Kite Runner" here comes "A Thousand Splendid Suns." I can't get enough of this genius, Hosseini. I wait with bated breath for his next masterpiece. Customer Rating: Summary: Heart-wrenchingly beautiful Comment: Judging from the number of reviews, I must be the last person on the planet to read this book. If you listened to the audiobook as I did, just a friendly warning: don't listen to it in public--because I defy you not to bawl like a baby at parts of this book, especially the last third. "Suns" seemed to me like an allegorical tale. Hosseini has written a very observant, photographic picture of life in Afghanistan as seen through the eyes of Maryam, Laila and to some extent Rasheed and Tariq. This is definitely a book told through the women. It is about how each of their lives either expands and painfully, brutally and violently contracts at the whim of the men in their lives, just as Afghanistan is contracting and suffocating at the hands of the Russians, warlords and then the Taliban. Hosseini does not spare the reader the pain and despair of Maryam's life, beginning with her betrayal by her father, through her daily life with the "cheerful cruelty" and violence of Rasheed, and Laila's unwelcome entry into it. He describes with incredible realism how Laila's life literally explodes around her. I haven't read The Kite Runner, but after reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I cannot wait. More Reviews