Hi All,
This months read is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It is his eagerly anticipated follow-up to the brilliant first novel The Kite-Runner.
A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women. It 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.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication Date: 22 May 2007
Links:
- Read an interview with the author, available on
- Download the first chapter
- Website dedicated to the author
1 comment:
This would have to be one of my favourites. It is the follow-up to The Kite-Runner, an excellent first novel focusing on a man growing up in Afghanistan. Whereas A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on the women in Afghanistan. It shows the harsh realities that women in that country face on a daily basis. Living under a harsh regime where women are indeed treated as second class citizens and effectively owned by their fathers, husbands, brothers, etc. I found it a powerful read, difficult in parts but engaging overall. A must read.
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