A Thousand Splendid Suns
May 16th, 2008 | by wowo |
Book Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Publisher: Riverhead; 1 edition (May 22, 2007)
Hardcover: 384 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594489505
ISBN-13: 978-1594489501
Book Description
After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.
It’s difficult to imagine a harder first act to follow than The Kite Runner: a debut novel by an unknown writer about a country many readers knew little about that has gone on to have over four million copies in print worldwide. As special as The Kite Runner was, those readers said, A Thousand Splendid Suns is more so, bringing Hosseini’s compassionate storytelling and his sense of personal and national tragedy to a tale of two women that is weighted equally with despair and grave hope.
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns 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.
Book Review
Starred Review. Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—”There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten”—is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters. (May) –Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Washington Post Book World, May 20, 2007
Just in case you’re wondering whether Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns is as good as The Kite Runner, here’s the answer: No. It’s better.
Entertainment Weekly, May 28, 2007
Hosseini’s depiction of Mariam and Laila’s plight would seem cartoonishly crude if it were not, by all accounts, a sadly accurate version of what many Afghan women have experienced. The romantic twists and fairy-tale turns are not so accurate. But, as in The Kite Runner, they are precisely what make the novel such a stirring read. Childhood promises are sacred; true love never dies; justice will be done; sisterhood is powerful. It’s unrealistic, and almost impossible to resist. B+.
People, May 25, 2007
Hosseini sets his story against the backdrop of Afghanistan’s 30-year ordeal-the Soviet invasion, the emergence of the Taliban-but it’s the soul-stirring connection between two victimized women that gives this novel its battered heart. 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.
Family Circle, June 2007
Inspiring and heart-wrenching, the story delves into love, sacrifice and survival.
O, the Oprah Magazine, June 2007
Love may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you consider the war-ravaged landscape of Afghanistan. But that is the emotion-subterranean, powerful, beautiful, illicit, and infinitely patient-that suffuses the pages of Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns.
More, June 2007
Absolutely read it. It’s a revealing look at the lives of the women beneath the burkas in contemporary Afghanistan.
New York Daily News, May 20, 2007
The author’s fans won’t be disappointed with A Thousand Splendid Suns–if anything, this book shows at even better advantage Hosseini’s storytelling gifts…. The title, A Thousand Splendid Suns, comes from a tribute to hope and joy by Persian poet Hafiz, and Hosseini’s novel is the story of the sacrifices necessary to sustain hope and joy, and the power of love to overcome fear. Splendid indeed.
Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2007
What keeps this novel vivid and compelling are Hosseini’s eye for the textures of daily life and his ability to portray a full range of human emotions, from the smoldering rage of an abused wife to the early flutters of maternal love when a woman discovers she is carrying a baby.
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