A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
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List Price: ££11.99
Our Price: ££3.20
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Manufacturer: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780747582977
ISBN: 0747582971
Label: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2007-05-22
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Studio: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: An emotional read
Comment: A Thousand Splendid Suns left me emotionally drained - but in 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 stuck in my mind as being so simple but so powerful. Hosseini is a great story teller and 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 you in this way or play on your mind for days.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Afghani `War And Peace' That Promises To Be One of 2007's Best Novels
Comment:
Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is a genuine instant literary classic, and one destined to be remembered as one of 2007's best novels. It should be compared favorably to such legendary Russian novels like "War and Peace" and "Doctor Zhivago". And yet it is ironic to compare Hosseini's latest novel to such classic works written by Tolstoy and Pasternak, especially in 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 them in recounting most vividly, an intense, horrific period in 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 and dialogue which so easily reminds me of Salman Rushdie's extraordinary literary skills; these are demonstrated most notably in his great early novel "Midnight's Children". Indeed Hosseini, like Rushdie, is yet another South Asian writer committed to writing great novels in 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, and share my observation that he has become one of our most compelling writers of contemporary fiction.
Afghanistan's tumultuous, tragic recent history is told in 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, and his servant, Nana. And then later, but still early on in the novel, we will meet Laila, the youngest child of Babi and Fariba, both members of Kabul's early 1970s educated middle class. Mariam's heart-wrenching efforts in trying to gain her father's acceptance as his legitimate daughter lead unexpectedly to personal tragedy and a new life as the wife of Rasheed, an elderly Kabul shoemaker. Against her own free-spirited will, and 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 lifestyle in the provincial city of Herat. In Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, the relatively illiterate, young Mariam soon finds some solace in a brief, tenuous friendship with the older Fariba. Fariba's husband Babi is a Kabul University-educated former teacher fully conversant in both traditional Afghani literature and 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 and medieval Afghani poetry at home; its war-ravaged streets permanently ending her attendance at a local Western-oriented primary school.
Hosseini has cleverly compared and 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 and lover, and 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 and a friend in 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 described in 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 and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The relatively tranquil Soviet occupation, and then later, evacuation of Kabul is succeeded by the bloody civil war amongst warlords, and the subsequent rise and 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 lost in the mutually entangled lives of torment and 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, much in the same fashion as his literary predecessors Tolstoy and Pasternak. A splendid 21st Century novel that is most worthy of comparison to "War and Peace" and "Doctor Zhivago".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great story
Comment: As there are so many others who have reviewed this book I simply say that is thought this was one of the best books I've read. It's fast-paced, realistic and moving. Mr Hossein surely is one of the best modern writers around and writes in such a way that the reader gets enough of the story but not so much that the details get in the way and the story becomes bogged-down. Arguably, this book is even better than The Kite Runner!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: More of the same (but not so good)
Comment: I'm half way thru and it feels suspiciously like KiteRunner2. When I put it down I have to practically cut my hand off to stop me reading the next chapter. All very ferociously moving writing. But will it have any substance? Or will we see another empty Hollywood 'interpretation' a year or so down the line . . .
(four hours later)
OK, I stayed up and finished it - it's definitely a 'page turner' Clever writing technique that keeps you on tenterhooks all the way through.
On the other hand, I felt emotionally manipulated. The story lacks the underlying spirit of joy buried in The Kite Runner and the relevance of the title, in this case, is little more than a bit of poetry that fails to impress. Some of the details about Afghanistan are interesting, but it feels formulaic: massively heartbreaking stories about chief protagonists, heavy dashes of war realism thrown in to keeep the momentum going half way through, and a dose of unconvincing Schmaltz to top it off. What's worse, the jacket description gives away major plot points so you know exactly what will happen.
With The Kite Runner, this remarkably skilful author shocked us into a new vision of the Afghan world. With A Thousand Splendid Suns, he just churns out more of what the fans want to read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Informative and readable but....
Comment: I was looking forward to reading this book as I really liked `Kite Runner'. But I did not think A `Thousand Splendid Suns' was as strong as `Kite Runner'. The characters are well drawn, but I felt Hosseini does not understand women as well as he so fully understood and got inside the skin of the male characters of `Kite Runner' from childhood to adulthood. I feel the bitterness of the Afghan women, specially Miriam, but somehow I do not empathise with them. To me, their lives seem squalid rather than difficult and troubled.
The book was almost documentary, and for me was not as evocative as Kite Runner in portraying Afghanistan itself. It was as if the author concentrated too much on the story, which moves swiftly (too swiftly?) and never sags, but without giving the same amount of attention to the characters, which to me often lacked depth. And with so much emphasis on the terrible treatment of Afghan women by their menfolk and their society, which forms the bulk of the book, it is hard to accept that it is easy for a widow to remarry, as happens at the end. It seems an easy plot point to keep the story moving, But jars with everything that has gone before.
That said it is very readable and in many ways informative, although the political events have a `pasted in' feel and do not blend in as naturally as they should. And I would rather spend a day read this than much of the hyped up pulp on the market.
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