A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

Anyone who has read Hosseni's first novel, The Kite Runner, will kind of know what to expect from this second helping about Afghanistan and the lives of two women caught up in the events there during many years of conflict and, at times, virtual imprisonment at the hands of their husband. Often whilst reading this, both the subject matter and the novel itself seemed very uncomfortable but it was a highly compelling read nonetheless and one that I enjoyed (though this is not really the right word) far more than I thought I would. It begins with Mariam, the illegitimate child of a successful businessman who spends her early years in a shack on the ...

Imagine living in a war torn country in which generations have seen nothing else but death and destruction. This book covers three decades of turbulence in war torn Afganistan seen through the eyes of same number of generations living ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. Actually women would find this novel easier to understand than the likes of me because the two main characters are women living in a rough tough men's world, their lives are dictated by men folk be it their fathers, brothers or husbands. They live in a world where it is difficult to keep ones dignity and danger lurks over the horizon. Sometimes it is better to read a ...

If you could find a bookshop or library that organised its books by detailed topics rather than alphabetically or by broad genre, I think it's safe to say that the shelf labelled 'Happy Books About Afghanistan' would be one of the emptiest in the shop. A Thousand Splendid Suns is no exception to the norm in being almost unremittingly bleak but by the standards of others I've read, it's only scratching the surface. Khaled Hosseini's first book, "The Kite Runner" was a massive international success with - if you believe the publishers' publicity - sales in excess of 8 million copies worldwide. Its popularity was driven largely by word-of-mouth ...