Customer Reviews
Fantastic, poignant - get ready to get angry - By: Nancy Williams, 04 Nov 2008 
This is a magnificent story of the plight of womenin Afghanistan, both before, during & after the Taliban. It traces the story of Mariam & Laila, both from very different background, but both finding themselves living without freedom, with constant violence & with nothing but their love for one another & the dream of a better life to keep them going.
Books such as this are essential reading because so many of us are ignorant to the every day lives of people livingin a war torn country such as Afghanistan. We hear about the victims of regimes, but when you look at storiesin newsprint, or hear them on TV whilst you are eating a good dinner, or living your comfortable life, they can be distant. This book, despite it being fiction, allows you to see what it could be like to livein Afghanistan as a woman with very few choices. If you are like me, it will make you furiously angry thatin today's modern world people are still treated this way, simply by virtue of the fact that they were born female.
Nevertheless, this book is full of hope. It is beautifully written & demonstrates how the will to survive can prevail, especially when boosted by love, no matter how unexpected. I think this a mature novel written with thought & understanding. I had to keep putting it down to bring my emotions backin check, but I couldn't actually stop until I'd finished.
a thousand slendid suns a truly splendid read - By: Michelle Williams, 02 Nov 2008 i loved this book, i read the kite runner first & thought it would struggle to be as good, it was different &in my opinion better, the plot has been covered here by other reviewers but i cried at the end, it showed just how futile life can be for womenin afghanistan & how the choices are taken, how brutal life can be, i would recommend highly
Really brilliant - By: A. King, 22 Oct 2008 I hesitated to read Hosseini's work until I could no longer ignore recommendations. If The Kite Runner is excellent, then A Thousand Splendid Suns is brilliant. It's a moving story of two Afghan women, their personal tragedies & the tragedy of their country descending into enduring conflict. But hope & love endure as well. A must read.
An emotional read - By: M. Gallagher, 04 Oct 2008 A Thousand Splendid Suns left me emotionally drained - butin a good way! I had tears rolling down my cheeks for the last couple of chapters. Although I had a couple of very minor gripes (for instance, I don't think it was fully explored why Mariam felt so hostile to Lalia at first given what a tyrant she was married to) this book certainly affected me on a very deep level. There were certain descriptions that have stuckin my mind as being so simple but so powerful. Hosseini is a great story teller & a master of words, that's for sure. A novel like this reminds you of why nothing beats a great book - rarely can a film affect youin this way or play on your mind for days.
An Afghani `War And Peace' That Promises To Be One of 2007's Best Novels - By: John Kwok, 30 Sep 2008 Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is a genuine instant literary classic, & one destined to be remembered as one of 2007's best novels. It should be compared favorably to such legendary Russian novels like "War & Peace" & "Doctor Zhivago". And yet it is ironic to compare Hosseini's latest novel to such classic works written by Tolstoy & Pasternak, especiallyin light of their country's recent sordid history with Afghanistan, Hosseini's country of birth. However, I believe that this comparison is most apt, since he joins themin recounting most vividly, an intense, horrific periodin his homeland's recent history, which shows no immediate prospect yet of a peaceful resolution. Hosseini also demonstrates that he is both a literary master of exquisite detail & dialogue which so easily reminds me of Salman Rushdie's extraordinary literary skills; these are demonstrated most notablyin his great early novel "Midnight's Children". Indeed Hosseini, like Rushdie, is yet another South Asian writer committed to writing great novelsin the English language, demonstrating once more the Indian subcontinent's rapid ascendancy as an important source of original first-rate English language literature. Fans of "The Kite Runner", his critically acclaimed literary debut, will rejoice after reading his second novel, & share my observation that he has become one of our most compelling writers of contemporary fiction.
Afghanistan's tumultuous, tragic recent history is toldin riveting, exquisite detail by Hosseini, which is seen through the eyes of two extraordinary young intelligent women. We are introduced first to Mariam, the harami (bastard) daughter of wealthy Jalil Khan, a prominent Herat businessman, & his servant, Nana. And then later, but still early onin the novel, we will meet Laila, the youngest child of Babi & Fariba, both members of Kabul's early 1970s educated middle class. Mariam's heart-wrenching effortsin trying to gain her father's acceptance as his legitimate daughter lead unexpectedly to personal tragedy & a new life as the wife of Rasheed, an elderly Kabul shoemaker. Against her own free-spirited will, & inquisitive nature, Mariam reluctantly submits to age-old Islamic Afghani customs even as she realizes that some fellow Afghani women - Khan's legitimate daughters from his three wives - are acquiring a Western-oriented educated lifestylein the provincial city of Herat. In Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, the relatively illiterate, young Mariam soon finds some solacein a brief, tenuous friendship with the older Fariba. Fariba's husband Babi is a Kabul University-educated former teacher fully conversantin both traditional Afghani literature & Western civilization. When Kabul erupts into a bloody civil war soon after the fall of its Communist regime, Babi will teach their daughter Laila both modern Western mathematics & medieval Afghani poetry at home; its war-ravaged streets permanently ending her attendance at a local Western-oriented primary school.
Hosseini has cleverly compared & contrasted traditional Islamic Afghani customs with Western civilized values, especially with respect to women, through the unexpected metamorphosis of Laila's character from a free-spirited, intelligent school girl to a tradition-bound Afghani bride, as Rasheed's second wife, forced into this arrangement by both a romantic farewell tryst with Tariq, her childhood best friend & lover, & a personal tragedy brought on by a vicious civil war on the streets of Kabul between rival Afghani tribal warlords. Eventually she will find a soul mate & a friendin the older Mariam, both realizing that they've become virtual slaves to their older husband, who is all too willing to hide behind fundamentalist Islamic tradition as he makes their lives within his household a living embodiment of Hell.
Nearly fifty years of tumultuous, often bloody, Afghani history are describedin graphic detail via Hosseini's elegant, poetic prose. The 1973 coup d'etat against the Afghani monarchy, led by a member of the royal family, is followed five years later by another coup against the self-proclaimed president for life, leading inexorably to a Communist regime & the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The relatively tranquil Soviet occupation, & then later, evacuation of Kabul is succeeded by the bloody civil war amongst warlords, & the subsequent rise & fall of the Taliban regime. All of these events are interwoven neatly by Hosseini into the tragic lives of his two heroines. And yet, as readers will find out eventually, not all is lostin the mutually entangled lives of torment & pain for these two women, since Hosseni does end his novel on a hopeful, indeed triumphant, note. A triumphant note that is most worthy for a novel which successfully carries through the ambitious literary scope of Hosseni's fictionalized recent history of Afghanistan, muchin the same fashion as his literary predecessors Tolstoy & Pasternak. A splendid 21st Century novel that is most worthy of comparison to "War & Peace" & "Doctor Zhivago".
