A Thousand Splendid Suns

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" is BRILLIANTLY written, but will shake you to the depths of your HUMAN HEART AND SOUL! This book will have you feeling a super human strength to cause the utmost harm to the characters that YOU KNOW EXIST outside of these pages! My prayers of escape, survival, fortitude, love, and strength radiates to every woman that share the experiences in this book. What a SERIOUS, complete, yet heartbreaking and BITTERSWEET ending, with many lessons on what character, love, pride, sacrifice, and TRUE BRAVERY looks like and to think about. NEVER, EVER will I FORGET this book, as, again, it shook me to the depths of my heart and soul and left me numb!

You know you are in the hands of a masterful storyteller when you put a book down only because you have no choice - life drags you away and it's a physical and emotional wrench to let it go, even for a moment. When all you can think as you go about compulsory tasks are the story and the characters. While you are away, you wonder what they are doing, where the narrator is going to take them and you care about their fates deeply. Such is the effect of A Thousand Splendid Suns. The characters live beyond the pages - not merely at the end, but throughout the reading experience, so realistically and gorgeously have they been drawn. Just as the sublime The Kite Runner told the tale of doomed male friendship, ATSS tells the story of two very different Afghani women: Mariam - shy, subservient, filled with self-doubt and yet, despite what life has meted out, is also honest and possessed of an innocence that is both her greatest strength and weakness. Then there is the beautiful, smart and kind Laila. Raised under very different roofs and with different expectations of their future, fate in the form of political and sectarian upheaval throws these women together and what happens before, during and after is heart-wrenchingly bitter-sweet. Hosseini knows not only how to capture the reader's imagination but our hearts as well. Told without sentimentality but nonetheless with an almost unbearable sweetness and pathos, ATSS unapologetically describes what the women of Afghanistan (and many men, children, families and thus communities) were forced to endure. The rampant misogyny, sexism and horrific abuses; terror, hope, the loss, the grind, the joy in the smallest and simplest of things; their constant sacrifices. Their resilience is formidable and humbling; their strength amazing - as is their capacity to forgive. By focussing primarily on Mariam and Laila (and those who play important roles in shaping who and what they become) Hosseini gives us a searing insight into not only the plight of those who are helpless pawns in a brutal battle for control of a weakened state, but Western prejudices, sense of entitlement and misunderstanding as well as revealing the ugliness and terrible beauty of a culture so few of us understand except through snatches from sensationalized news bulletins or from foreign correspondents with a brief to fill. That there are those resistant to as well as complicit in oppression, suffer because of wilful ignorance and the brutality of others; the way in which religion and culture can impose horrific restraints when reduced to power struggles while at the same time gesturing to a proud nobility is evident in the novel. Inevitably, as is the case when religion, sex and gender become politicized, there are scapegoats who pay for the hubris and cruelty of others - for more than a lifetime. The damage inflicted can last for generations. I didn't want this book to end. My heart soared, it plummeted; I gasped, cried, held my breath and as I read felt physically pummelled then embraced, experiencing the 30 years the tale covers as a visceral thing that left me psychologically and imaginatively battered but richer in ways that count. But, I also felt ashamed. Ashamed for thoughts I may have harboured deep down, for prejudices I may not have even realized I held until this novel exposed them to me, and for that, I am grateful. This is a beautiful, deeply moving book that I cannot recommend highly enough. It was a privilege to read and now to share.

The paperback version of A Thousand Splendid Suns is a great, affordable way to read such a powerful story. The book itself is lightweight and easy to hold, which makes it comfortable for longer reading sessions. The pages and cover are pretty standard quality - not anything fancy - but they hold up well with normal use. As for the story, it’s emotional, meaningful, and really stays with you. Overall, this edition is a solid choice if you’re just looking for a simple, easy-to-read copy at a good price.

Much as in THE KITE RUNNER, A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS occasionally suffers from some fairly "high-schoolish" prose and sometimes the plot twists stretch my willingness to suspend disbelief. (Stretch...not break.) KITE RUNNER has one gigantic leap like this in its final third, and so does A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS. I mention these items right up front, because the amount of praise I'd want to heap on this book overall so overwhelms any criticism, I want to make sure everyone understands that Hosseini is not the greatest writer ever. He is, however, a fervent storyteller and deeply immersed in the societies and characters he explores. There is no doubting his commitment to telling a great story and drawing you in. His work is very cinematic (I mean that as a good thing here) because it constantly hurtles forward. The plot moves briskly, but the growth of the characters is just as snappy. In my adult life, I find that I don't have as much time as I'd like to read for pleasure. Often, my reading comes in bed at night, and I fall asleep much sooner than I'd like. Once in awhile, when on an airplane, I'll get to read a bit more...but even then, I drift off or get distracted. Well, this summer, I was on a 4 hour flight, and I read more than half this book in that one sitting, never once tempted to set it aside and rest my eyes. It just blazed ahead and I was fully immersed. Hosseini revisits familiar territory (Afghanistan) but where KITE RUNNER focused on a primarily male experience, and also spent a lot of time in the United States...SUN stays almost entirely in this beleaguered nation, and is viewed through the eyes of two very different and VERY fascinating women. The turns that their lives take are Hosseini's way not only of showing the social evolution (and de-evolution) over the last few decades in Afghanistan, but the political and religious upheavals as well. In the hands of a less-skilled storyteller, it would seem like a dusty and not very clever device. ("Oh look, now that the communists have taken over, let's send one of the characters to a communist run school so we can hear how the Russians did things.") And while intellectually I understand that this is basically what the author is doing...his pacing, his beautifully imagined characters and his obvious love for the nation make the narrative, the "fiction", so very compelling. The book is full of death and sadness. Many events occur which are horrific and not the least bit pleasant for the reader. Yet in the end, it is an amazingly uplifting book. A "happy" ending? I supposed it kinda is...but it is really bittersweet. I closed the book, grateful to have read it...and the best sign of all...wishing I could follow the characters some more. I highly recommend the book, despite the flaws. Also, I think the book could be read and enjoyed by a teen audience as well...much like KITE RUNNER, I believe it could be an important and inspiring book for young people. It would warrant a PG-13 rating, for sure...but the mildly scandalous moments are more than made up by so many uplifting, informative or transporting passages.

I don't usually leave book reviews, but I have to for this one. I have read hundreds of sad books in my lifetime, but this is definitely the saddest of them all. My heart is in pieces, and I know that this book will stay with me for the rest of my days. It is the most beautiful gem of literature, and at the same time the most devastating. (And here I was, thinking it could not get any more heartbreaking than The Kite Runner)

I weeped at the end of this book. Simply weeped. Before I get into its praises, let's get a few shortcomings out of the way. There are a few aspects to Hosseini's writing style that I'm not fond of, and the same minor complaints I had in The Kite Runner also apply here, except to a lesser degree. He still did some explicit foreshadowing, but only a couple times, and in at least one case, I do think it added a bit of suspense rather than detracted from the current narrative. Later on, when foreshadowed events occured, characters undoubtedly conjured up old memories that reminded the reader that said event was foreshadowed - as if Hosseini didn't trust the reader to be smart enough to remember on his own. But, in most cases, it seemed natural that if these events were really occurring, the characters would remember these old conversations with fondness, regret, or poignancy, so it wasn't really out of line to write about such memories. Overall, I think Hosseini's writing is more developed in this book, and ultimately, my rating of a book depends a great deal on how much of an impression it left on me, which is why I gave this book 5 stars despite these minor annoyances. If The Kite Runner was, in part, a gentle and lovely portrayal of a peaceful, bygone time in Afghanistan history, then A Thousand Splendid Suns is its natural successor, telling intimate stories of women who endured the recent decades of multiple wars that tore the country apart and made it unrecognizable to its own citizens. On one level, this book serves a purpose by informing readers of Afghanistan's political turmoil and the nightmare of living in a war zone. But, it is also a book about motherhood, self-sacrifice, endurance, grace, and unadulterated love for one's homeland. The book is filled with interesting characters. A woman who, to a stranger, may look like the embodiment of weakness and servility, but proves to be a fountain of admirable grace, wisdom, and strength not in spite of, but because of her sufferings. A man who mistreated women with shocking cruelty out of a misguided sense of tradition and conservatism, but also not unintelligent and still capable of affection and tenderness. Another woman who has enormous potential as a child, who is raised to value education above all else, but who must succumb to the draconian laws of the Taliban. I was so invested in the characters that two-thirds of the way through the book, I started to fear that an undesirable conclusion would ruin the book for me. Without giving anything away, I'll say that I loved the ending.

Being an ESL teacher I was inspired to read something about Afghan culture because I have a lot of Afghan students and can't understand how it could be in the 21st century people don't know how to read and write in their own language. This book sheds the light on Afghan lives. More over I couldn't put it down. It is not light reading. You get deeply involved and it is hard. But this is a very good book if you are interested in how people live in other countries and how different cultures are. Also it is easy to read because you do want to follow the story.

Gone are the days that would take me weeks to finish a 400 something page novel. I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns in 3 days. And there is nothing "splendid" in this agonizingly sad, depressing, horror-stricken story of women and children who are brutalized, beaten, and treated worse than animals, with a life that begins depressingly sad and gets progressively worse until you can't take it anymore, but you keep reading because the story telling is brilliant, and you - if not the characters - want some kind of revenge, but the author keeps you hungry, hungry for a simple taste of justice and a simple drop of satisfaction. He keeps driving his mad blood-thirsty wife-beating loathsome male characters - save for one - and you want to tear at them with a knife and finish them off yourself! Sooooooo, as you can see, it was not a happy book, and I'll not read the other stories by Hosseini at this time simply because, like Mariam, the truly sad character, said it so well, "what good does it do?" What good does it do knowing the heart-wrenching brutalities that go on still in the 21st centuries in countries like Afghanistan? What good does it do to know about it? What good is it to witness horribly wrong things from a distance but not be able to help? As for writing style, I loved Hosseini's story telling style. Being from Iran, the Farsi words that he throws at you are from my mother tongue so they had a particularly hard sting and their meaning went deep inside me, awakening distant memories of the horrific government of Iran that has more than its own shares of similar brutalities. Yes, indeed the human spirit does thrive and that is a beautiful thing to see, but oh goodness, if I had to go back, I am not sure I'd read this book to get an example of the human spirit thriving. I struggled between the 3 and 4 stars. Yes the book was GOOD, very good. The writing is exquisite. Sometimes he goes on and on about descriptions that I could care a little less about and I had far less interest in the politics of Afghanistan than I did in the characters in the story so those parts dragged on a bit but still, the story moved forward and kept me hoping against hope that there were be an ounce of happiness reserved for at least one character ..... If you want to enter the dark, depressing, and lonesome world of the women in the Islamic regimes such as Iran or Afghanistan, go on and read this .... it will give you more than you bargain for! And remember, this work of fiction might as well be fact. These things do happen to the women in that world all the time.

J’ai adoré ce livre, très émotionnel

I read The kite Runner and then thought to buy this book...it's very well written,the depiction of historical and story to keep reader occupied...... I am not much of reader but at one point I felt like details became vague and story started to feel like one sided,specially when Laila gets introduced in story......overall good read....

It was for an English assignment gurl when I tell you this was the first school book I read in less than a week. It was that good like so entertaining since something was always occurring. So beautifully written and made. The storyline the characters all amazing

Good!

My favorite book.