A Thousand Splendid Suns

This is the story of an unusual and lifelong friendship between two Afghan women, spanning from the idyllic mid 1950s to post-September 11 Kabul. Bound by tragedy and fate, by political circumstance and custom, the two women live through the Soviet war, the harrowing days of the Afghan civil war and the rule of the Taliban. Yet even as their world unravels around them and innocence is shattered, they find that there, amidst the ruins, is the possibility for hope, meaning and unexpected grace.

A gripping drama of beauty, destruction, sadness, and suspense, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of the last thirty years of Afghan history, and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, and the salvation to be found in love. Poor, uneducated Mariam is terrified and only fifteen years old when she is shipped off to Kabul to marry a troubled man thirty years her senior. Nearly two decades later, pretty fifteen-year-old Laila finds herself in the same situation when her intellectual parents are killed by a stray Mujahideen bomb.

Forced to forget the passionate love of her life, a boy she's known since childhood, Laila has no choice but to join that same loveless household with shy Mariam and the bitter husband they now share. In time, however, orphaned Laila and childless Mariam form a friendship that makes them both sisters and mother and daughter to one another. When children are born into this household, the situation gets worse and worse - from shootings and bombings on the street, to physical abuse and starvation at home - and the women are put to phenomenal tests of endurance and strength. In scene after suspenseful scene, Hosseini shows us just how a woman's love for her family can motivate her to overcome the most daunting obstacles, can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice.

In the end, we see, it is love - or even love's memory - that is often the key to survival. A Thousand Splendid Suns is the heartbreaking story of an unforgiving history, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love; it is a novel that lives on in the mind long after the last page.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan and his family received political asylum in the USA in 1980. Author of the internationally best-selling novel The Kite Runner, Khaled is a doctor and lives in California.