A thousand splendid suns

by Khaled Hosseini

Hardcover, 630 pages

English language

Published Jan. 11, 2007 by Riverhead Books.

OCLC Number:: 156976176

(3 reviews)

In his brilliant debut, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini mesmerized us with his evocative portraits and beautiful bittersweet story. Now he returns to tumultuous Afghanistan to tell the tale of an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love...

The child of an illicit affair, Mariam was raised by her single mother on the outskirts of town. At 14, she was sent to Kabul and sold in marriage to Rasheed, a widower decades older than she. But now after twenty years and no offspring, Rasheed takes a beautiful teenager, Laila, as his second wife. While Mariam despises Laila and the baby born months after her arrival, Rasheed's cruelty and the explosive changes in the country soon draw the women together. --front flap

45 editions

fionag11@bookwyrm.social reviewed A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

None

5 stars

Wow, yeah. This book is hard to read, because of the domestic abuse, but if you can stand it, it is also such a fascinating window into the last few decades of Afghanistan's history, powerful, full of tension. You will be rooting for these two women and looking forward to the liberation of Kabul as much as they did - will it be in time to save them? Even more poignant given that we have now gone back to the days of the Taliban. OK, don't despair, there are light moments! - one detail that sticks with me is when the Titanic craze hits Taliban-controlled Kabul - Titanic burkhas!

Jamal reviewed A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini

What am I supposed to take away?

2 stars

Content warning Spoilers ahead!

I read this on the recommendation of a woman. Apparently, in her circle, this book is quite popular for the way it shows the hidden injustices against women and the weight they carry in society. To these points I can agree, and I see why someone can have an emotional moment reading this book.

For me however, I found the characters to be mostly flat, and the plot just depressing. I had to force myself to finish it when I was halfway through. The pile-on of horror did not make me think this or feel that, it purely led to disgust and boredom.

One positive take away is the historical context, which made the chronology of events memorable.

I suspect that I was not the target audience for this book. I saw that its fans fall into two camps: those that like it for the historical and humanized look at Afghanistan, and those that related to the women's perspectives in that society. The former did not have that wow effect on me given that I was a bit more knowledgeable on the topic, and the latter fell a bit short of capturing me given the flatness of the characters and the extremes of violence.

Taru Luojola

rated it

Sept. 3, 2015

Subjects

Large type books
Families
Fiction