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| A Thousand Splendid Suns | 
 enlarge | Author: Khaled Hosseini
Publisher: Riverhead
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $4.23
You Save: $21.72 (84%)
New (127) Used (268) Collectible (52) from $4.23
Avg. Customer Rating:  1310 reviews
Sales Rank: 251
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 372
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 1594489505
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781594489501
ASIN: 1594489505
Publication Date: May 22, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Standard used condition.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Brutal but Moving Story of Life in Afghanistan May 24, 2007
140 out of 152 found this review helpful
Mariam's life revolves around her father's visits. While she lives in a hut with her mother, it's the weekly visits from her father that are the light of her existence. All that changes when she turns fifteen and is forced to marry an older man she has never met. Rasheed lives on the other side of the country, so Miriam leaves behind the only people she has ever known to live with a stranger. Rasheed is a strict man, and Miriam finds herself with restrictions on her new life.
On the day the Soviets invade Afghanistan, another woman is born. Laila is raised in a progressive family. Her father encourages her to learn as much as she can in school. Her mother suffers from depression and leaves her alone most of the time. Her best friend is a neighbor boy, Tariq, who lost a leg to a land mine years earlier.
Laila lives just down the street from Mariam, yet they hardly interact until the struggle for control in Afghanistan brings tragedy to their street. Then their lives become irrevocably linked. Despite the 19 years age difference between them, a strong bond of friendship is formed. Will it be enough to endure the hardship ahead?
I tend to stick to light entertainment and rarely read the more serious works of literature. However, several friends I respect loved Khaled Hosseini's first novel, so I decided to give this one a try. And I'm glad I did.
This book isn't light entertainment by any stretch of the imagination. The writing style produces an almost melancholy air right from the start.
I tend to read plot heavy books, so this character study was a definite change of pace for me. I found the first half slow going at times, mainly because I knew where the story was going. Once I got into the second half, things really picked up. The ending was very bittersweet. I couldn't think of a better way to end it.
Not to say I wasn't interested before then. Mariam and Laila are two very real, interesting characters. I felt for them and became a very real part of their struggles over the course of the book.
Adding to the book's richness is the historical background. The novel covers 40 years of Afghani history. While that is never the focus of the novel, it is an ever present backdrop to the personal struggle of the two women. We in the west often forget how much we truly have to be thankful for. Here, we get a picture of life in the midst of a civil war and under an oppressive regime.
I can understand why my friends were so taken with Hosseini's first novel. I know I will read it at some point. This new book comes highly recommended.
 A splendid, woman-centric story of friendship born of tragedy May 24, 2007
19 out of 25 found this review helpful
In a backdrop of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, adversaries form an unlikely bond based on a common fate: suffering cruelty at the hands of a man they fear. The story line in Hosseini's second novel is straightforward and contains fewer overly coincidental plot elements than his first, but simplicity may be its one criticism: at several key points, the reader can easily predict what will happen next. Additionally, through a string of misfortunes befalling several characters, inexplicably, the reader may not be moved much emotionally at their fates. This second novel set in Afghanistan, which women may enjoy more than men, is another enjoyable read, but is not as good as The Kite Runner. Great companion reads: The bookseller of Kabul by Arne Seierstad; Zinky Boys - Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War by Svetlana Alexievich; The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright; 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn; and a fantastic story set in Germany, related only by its wartime theme and tragedy affected friendship, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
A masterfully written, incredibly moving novel May 24, 2007
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of those rarest of novels, a work of fiction that stakes an uncontested claim to the status of literature immediately upon publication. Khaled Hosseini has written a majestic, sweeping, emotionally powerful story that provides the reader with a most telling window into Afghan society over the past thirty-odd years. It's also a moving story of friendship and sacrifice, giving Western readers a rare glimpse into the suffering and mistreatment of Afghan women that began long before the Taliban came to power. Not only does the novel reveal the ruthlessness and pure evil of the Taliban, its chronicle of Afghanistan's bloody, repressive recent history helps demonstrate why we must remain constantly vigilant as the nation's move to democracy inches forward a little bit at a time. Centuries of embedded traditions and cultural proscriptions cannot be changed overnight, yet never again must the women of Afghanistan be forgotten.
Hosseini treats us to two main characters, each of whom embodies the time-honored endurance and suffering of the Afghan woman. Mariam grows up with her mother Nana in a humble home isolated from the hustle and bustle of the nearby city of Herat. Jalil, Mariam's father, visits once a week and dotes on his little girl, and it is Mariam's dearest wish to join Jalil's family in the city. Her mother disabuses her of such notions, offering her child a radically different opinion of her father. Mariam is illegitimate, and Nana tells her that she will never be recognized as Jalil's daughter. Mariam learns this lesson for herself at age fifteen, setting in motion a dark series of events that soon finds her married to an older man, Rasheed, in the city of Kabul. Scared, lonely, and dealing with a weight of guilt over her mother's death, Mariam soon finds misfortune permanently affixed to herself as her surly husband grossly mistreats and ignores her.
Meanwhile, young Laila grows up in the same Kabul neighborhood, the daughter of a teacher and a spirited mother. Her constant companion is Tariq, a boy who - despite having lost a leg to a land mine - never hesitates to defend her. Not surprisingly, she falls in love with Tariq, but the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan tears them apart just as their love manifests itself physically. As the mujahideen fight the Soviets and then turn on one another in the political vacuum left by the Soviet withdrawal, Kabul becomes a war zone, its days and nights filled with the mortal uncertainty of rocket impacts and gun battles. Fate is particularly unkind to Laila, who ultimately finds herself all alone, injured, and extremely vulnerable. Harboring a great secret in her heart, she reluctantly becomes Rasheed's second wife. Not surprisingly, Mariam resents this young girl whom Rasheed has brought into her already unhappy home, but in time, after Laila becomes a fellow victim of Rasheed's disdain, insults, and physical abuse, the two women develop a close relationship, one strong enough to sustain them through even harder times ahead.
The novel takes us through thirty years of tumultuous Afghan history, as seen through the eyes of two remarkable but representative, long-suffering women, from a time when women could basically lead their own lives, through the socio-economically devastating years of the Soviet invasion and the mujahideen resistance, on through the even more destructive years after the Soviets pulled out and Afghan warlords turned upon one another (killing countless innocent civilians in the process), all the way up to the Taliban seizure of power and its displacement by American and Allied forces in the wake of 9/11. As Mariam's mother taught her, endurance is the key to surviving as a woman in Afghanistan. Increasingly insolated as events unfolded, women such as Mariam and Laila had no one to turn to but each other, as their very humanity was taken away from them by increasingly repressive leaders and their own ever-more-violent husbands. Some women broke under the pressure of so much turmoil and heartache; others fled the country to escape the danger and repression; but women such as Mariam and Laila simply endured in the face of hellish circumstances.
I'm a man, and I know enough not to pretend I understand women, but the power of Hosseini's eloquent writing produced in me a feeling of real kinship for Mariam, Laila, and Laila's daughter Aziza. I am quite sure this is as close as I will ever come to truly beginning to appreciate the scale of the Afghan woman's plight. So many memorable scenes, so many horrible events stand out in the lives of these brave women. The best they could hope for was to be ignored - spared the physical and mental abuse of husbands, and in many cases relieved to hide themselves behind the burquas the Taliban insisted they wear in public. The Taliban stripped them of their very humanity, making them less than slaves, yet these women refused to be crushed by the system, exhibiting a kind of unparalleled courage and self-sacrifice that few men could ever hope to match. History enumerates the crimes of the Taliban, but Hosseini paints a truly compelling portrait of life in a land where flamingoes could not be painted without trousers covering their bare legs and where many citizens risked obscene torture just to obtain black market copies of the movie Titanic.
There is tragedy in A Thousand Splendid Suns - heart-breaking tragedy - yet the story is ultimately an inspirational epic with the power to enlighten the reader spiritually as well as historically. As you read this engrossing novel, all cultural and political barriers separating you from Hosseini's characters disappear and you cannot help but me moved by the sad fact that our fiction has been many a poor Afghan woman's reality. This eye-opening read has the power to change your view of the world and your place in it, and that makes it a truly masterful piece of literature.
It took seven hours... May 24, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
....for me to read The Kite Runner.
I read A Thousand Splendid Suns in six.
This book is less disturbing than The Kite Runner. There is more quiet desperation. A bit less personal story, and a bit more history.
But, it is no less gripping. The story and the history are beautifully woven together. The author holds nothing back in painting a stark picture of what it means to be a woman in a culture where they are valued only for how well they keep a house, and how many sons they produce. A culture where they are subject to the whims of men. Those that value them as worthwhile human beings are welcome oases - they seem to be the exceptions in their world, rather than the norm.
He also paints a stark picture of how much harm religious fanaticism and intolerance can do.
But, it also paints a picture of hope that the winds of change can blow cool and refreshing.
It also shows us the rich history of Afghanistan, a country that has endured, much like Nana said that women must. It shows a country and a people with much potential.
My eyes welled in a few places. At one point, I had to stop reading, close my eyes, and gather myself as the story hit close to home. I even laughed (Islamic flamingos.) By the end, tears were streaming down my face, and I was once again left feeling immensely satisfied.
It is rare that you find a writer who, with their first novel, shows that they are an immense talent. I had previously only ever read one such author in my life. From the first chapter of The Kite Runner, I knew that Khaled Hosseini would be one of them. A Thousand Splendid Suns is more proof of it.
I am already looking forward to what he produces next.
Of oppression, sisterhood and the tenacity of the human spirit. May 23, 2007
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
Having greatly enjoyed Khaled Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, I looked forward to his second effort with great anticipation and wasn't disappointed. The novel reads like an epic, it traces the stories of two women brought together by destiny - Mariam, the illegitimate child of a rich man, is married off at fifteen to a much older man, and suffers a life of suppression and subjugation and made to feel worthless for not being able to produce an heir. Her life takes an interesting turn years later when a young 14-year-old girl, Laila is brought into her household and made wife number two. The two women forge a bond of sisterhood, united against their oppressor/husband. I will not give too much of the plot away, but suffice to say that not only do we get to read about these two character's amazing and heartbreaking journey through the cruel and oppressive male-dominated world they live in, but we also get a lesson in Afghanistan's history prior to and later during the Soviet Occupation in the 1980s to the Taliban rule where women are reduced to the ranks of chattel ,and deemed mere breeding mares and servants of men. This is a searing portrait of the plight of women in Afghanistan, and not only does it give voice to the victims of male oppression and harsh cultural traditions, but it stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit with its unwavering hope.
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