A Wonderful Reading Experience!
Having just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns I can now put aside any questions I had about Hosseini being able to write a book that can come close to matching the heartwarming and often heartwrenching reading experience he provided in The Kite Runner. A Thousand Splendid Sun is every bit as good as The Kite Runner -- and in many ways is even better! It is an astonishing, powerful book that had me riveted from the first to the last page, and is broader in scope than The Kite Runner. It is a story of two generations of characters brought together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives -- the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness -- are inextricable from the history playing out around them. A Thousand Splendid Suns is not just a great, although overwhelmingly sad, story, it is history lesson of Afghanistan's last thirty years -- from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding -- that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in extremely intimate, human terms. Hosseini is a masterful writer whose prose and narrative style ooze emotion. If you have any hesitancy about reading this book, put your doubts aside and rush out to get yourself a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns. You'll be very glad you did. It is not only a book that will keep you from doing anything else but turning the pages, it is a book that will stay in your head and heart for years to come. It is that good, although that tragic!

Heartbreaking and enlightening
Khaled Hosseini is a faultless storyteller and (unlike many modern writers) he has a compelling and heartbreaking story to tell. I found this novel intelligent, insightful, empathetic and enlightening. It is moving without being sentimental.

It also made me ashamed of my own ignorance about (recent) history and so very grateful for the the freedom and equality I enjoy (and take forgranted) as a woman in the the UK.

I have yet to read the Kite Runner but it is certainly on my list.

Unrequited Love for Afganisthan
A Thousand Splendid Suns, for this slow reader, was finished in three days. Hosseini captured a similar full circle evocative tale as with The Kite Flyer, eyes again opened to an insider's view and memory. How the writer put himself in the role of these two suffering women, competing and then soul-mates, is a feat in itself, presenting their feminine persons and emotions against the tragedy of their present and historical surroundings. The author must respect women very much. With every word I felt the richness of the characters invoking tears the women were not allowed, only the reader, unexpectedly and in a real way.

This writer writes with dignity and an unrequited love of his country. When he brings us up to date with the current tragedies of Afghanistan, the underbelly is made clearer. Perhaps Hosseini is the Pamuk of Turkey enlarging our view through references to culture and poetry. In particular, note his descriptions of the living and then destroyed monumental sculptural Buddhas.

This soulful storyteller brings lives around to themselves through honesty and informs us of political and painful circumstances we could not know without living them ourselves.




Just couldn't put it down
On my way to the airport I realised I had forgotten to bring a book, so bought this one in duty free. I'm not a huge book reader, but just couldn't put this book down, every time I finished a chapter, I was itching to find out what was happening in the next. Although a fictional book, you could easily have believed it wasn't. I don't get moved to tears whilst reading, but I became very emotional at stages throughout the read. I've just lean't this to my god mother! Best read in a long time and an opporunity missed if you don't read it.

Very good
Really enjoyable, at times upsetting story. Like the Kite Runner, it pulls you in and makes you taste life in Afghanistan. The story of Mariam and Laila is compelling, tragic, touching, enlightening, and in places funny. I read the Kite Runner first, so the setting didn't give me the same feeling of discovery that I had reading Hosseini's first novel. Having said that, I was at times shocked and appalled at the treatment of Mariam and Laila not by their brutal husband, but also by the Taliban authorities.

I had a bit of a problem with the ending - it seemed too good to be true. Perhaps a political comment on the arrival of American and Allied troops in Kabul, designed to make one support the ongoing efforts there? This was accentuated by the author's note at the end, and left a slightly strange feeling. Did he write this book as a novel, or as an (admittedly powerful) way of making us see that as far as the Afghan people are concerned, the troops should not withdraw? I had read the book and enjoyed it, and now I was feeling guilty for my previous sentiments that our troops should pull out of Afghanistan. Don't get me wrong - I have a far better understanding of what was once a civilised and peaceful nation, of the turmoil and tragedy the people there have suffered, but I felt a little tricked.

Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed it; it opened my eyes and made me think, which is all I ask a good book to do.

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