Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-22
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Marie Claire
`Explores the turbulent history of modern Afghanistan through the lives of two young characters'

The Times
`The novel offers extraordinarily harrowing insights into the lives of Afghan women over the past three decades .... If he cut his teeth by writing about his countrymen, it is the plight of Afghanistan's women that has brought him to realise his full powers as a novelist'

London Paper Book of the Week
`Hosseini has stuck with his winning formula: compelling, unflashy storytelling centred around two sympathetic protagonists struggling in difficult times ... nothing beats a good story'

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Reading Experience!
Having just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns I can now put aside any questions I had about Hosseini being able to write a book that can come close to matching the heartwarming and often heartwrenching reading experience he provided in The Kite Runner. A Thousand Splendid Sun is every bit as good as The Kite Runner -- and in many ways is even better! It is an astonishing, powerful book that had me riveted from the first to the last page, and is broader in scope than The Kite Runner. It is a story of two generations of characters brought 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. A Thousand Splendid Suns is not just a great, although overwhelmingly sad, story, it is history lesson 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 extremely intimate, human terms. Hosseini is a masterful writer whose prose and narrative style ooze emotion. If you have any hesitancy about reading this book, put your doubts aside and rush out to get yourself a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns. You'll be very glad you did. It is not only a book that will keep you from doing anything else but turning the pages, it is a book that will stay in your head and heart for years to come. It is that good, although that tragic!

Heartbreaking and enlightening
Khaled Hosseini is a faultless storyteller and (unlike many modern writers) he has a compelling and heartbreaking story to tell. I found this novel intelligent, insightful, empathetic and enlightening. It is moving without being sentimental.

It also made me ashamed of my own ignorance about (recent) history and so very grateful for the the freedom and equality I enjoy (and take forgranted) as a woman in the the UK.

I have yet to read the Kite Runner but it is certainly on my list.

Unrequited Love for Afganisthan
A Thousand Splendid Suns, for this slow reader, was finished in three days. Hosseini captured a similar full circle evocative tale as with The Kite Flyer, eyes again opened to an insider's view and memory. How the writer put himself in the role of these two suffering women, competing and then soul-mates, is a feat in itself, presenting their feminine persons and emotions against the tragedy of their present and historical surroundings. The author must respect women very much. With every word I felt the richness of the characters invoking tears the women were not allowed, only the reader, unexpectedly and in a real way.

This writer writes with dignity and an unrequited love of his country. When he brings us up to date with the current tragedies of Afghanistan, the underbelly is made clearer. Perhaps Hosseini is the Pamuk of Turkey enlarging our view through references to culture and poetry. In particular, note his descriptions of the living and then destroyed monumental sculptural Buddhas.

This soulful storyteller brings lives around to themselves through honesty and informs us of political and painful circumstances we could not know without living them ourselves.