A Thousand Splendid Suns

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS (Khaled Hosseini)

GRADE:

10/10

OPINIONS:

I read this book in a few days, I just couldn’t stop reading.

There are violence, war, hope and love all in the same book. It would attract every kind of reader.

I think this story can give us an idea of how living between war and male domination is like.

After you will have read “A thousand splendid suns”, you will surely look for other books written by Khaled Hosseini (and if you read “The kite runner” you will find some surprises!)

PLOT (no spoiler):

In the first part of the story, Mariam is a teenager who lives in the outskirts of Herat with her mother. She is a Jalil’s illegitimate daughter, a business man who lives in the town with his three wives.

One day Mariam goes to Jalil’s home, but he doesn’t let her go in. She starts feeling hate for her father, but when she returns back home she finds out that her mother has committed suicide.

She has to stay in Jalil’s home, until Jalil’s family finds a man for Mariam: Rasheed. Rasheed is around 40 years old, and lives in Kabul. They get married and try to have a child, but Mariam is not able to have children. Her husband wants a son, so he becomes gradually aggressive and violent.

In the second part of the story Laila, Jalil and Mariam’s neighbour, is a girl who loves her childhood friend, Tariq. But Kabul is bombarded, so Tariq and his family have to leave Kabul. Laila, who is alone now, becomes Jalil’s second wife and gives him two children...