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A Thousand Splendid Suns Paperback – November 25, 2008

by Khaled Hosseini (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 48,629 ratings
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Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. 

“Just as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling first book, The Kite Runner.”—Newsweek

Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    432 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Publishing Group
  4. Publication date
    November 25, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.98 x 7.94 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    159448385X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1594483851
  8. Lexile measure
    830L
  9. See all details
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Popular Highlights in this book
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  1. “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
    Highlighted by 4,544 Kindle readers
  2. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance.
    Highlighted by 4,046 Kindle readers
  3. But, mostly, Mariam is in Laila’s own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.
    Highlighted by 3,216 Kindle readers
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A Thousand Splendid Suns is an ambitious work. Once again the setting is Afghanistan, but this time [Hosseini] has taken the last 33 years of that country’s tumultuous history of war and oppression and told it on an intimate scale, through the lives of two women.”—The New York Times 

“Spectacular. . . . Hosseini’s writing makes our hearts ache, our stomachs clench and our emotions reel. . . . Hosseini mixes the experiences of these women with imagined scenarios to create a fascinating microcosm of Afghan family life. He shows us the interior lives of the anonymous women living beneath identity-diminishing burqas... Hosseini writes in gorgeous and stirring language of the natural beauty and colorful cultural heritage of his native Afghanistan. . . . Hosseini tells this saddest of stories in achingly beautiful prose through stunningly heroic characters whose spirits somehow grasp the dimmest rays of hope.”—USA Today 

“Just as good, if not better, than Hosseini’s best-selling first book, The Kite Runner”—Newsweek 

“Compelling”—New York Magazine

 “Hosseini revisits Afghanistan for a compelling story that gives voice to the agonies and hopes of another group of innocents caught up in a war. . . . Mesmerizing . . . A Thousand Splendid Suns is the painful, and at times violent, yet ultimately hopeful story of two women’s inner lives. Hosseini’s bewitching narrative captures the intimate details of life in a world where it’s a struggle to survive, skillfully inserting this human story into the larger backdrop of recent history.”—San Francisco Chronicle 

“Hosseini . . . has followed his debut novel with another work of strong storytelling and engaging characters. . . . The story pulses with life. . . . Khaled Hosseini is simply a marvelously moving storyteller.”—San Jose Mercury News 

“Hosseini’s story . . . rings true as a universal story about victims of cruelty and those who lack the most fundamental of human rights. . . . Hosseini’s work is uplifting, enlightening, universal. The author’s love for his characters and for his country is palpable. In the end, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a love letter to a country and to a people. It is a celebration of endurance and survival in the face of unspeakable tragedy. This is a love song to anyone who has ever had a broken heart and to anyone who has ever felt powerless and yet still dares to dream. And yes, Hosseini has done it again.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

“The novel is beautifully written with descriptive details that will haunt you long after you finish reading it.”—Dallas Morning News 

“This [novel] tells the startling story of domestic adversaries who discover that survival in a horrific world is nearly impossible without compassion, love and solidarity.  . . Hosseini’s prose . . . can stun a reader with its powerful, haunting images.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

“Absolutely compelling on every level. It’s nearly impossible for a novel—a work of fantasy and fabrication—to deliver a formidable blow, a pounding of the senses, a reeling so staggering that we are convinced the characters and their dilemmas are genuine. Such a persuasion is particularly difficult when the setting is Afghanistan, a country and culture many see as too strange for recognition, for empathy. But that’s what Khaled Hosseini does again and again with A Thousand Splendid Suns.”—Chicago Sun-Times

 “Hosseini has the storytelling gift . . . [A Thousand Splendid Suns] offers us the sweep of historic upheavals narrated with the intimacy of family and village life. . . . What keeps this novel vivid and compelling are Hosseini’s eye for the textures of daily life and his ability to portray a full range of human emotions, from the smoldering rage of an abused wife to the early flutters of maternal love when a woman discovers she is carrying a baby. . . . Hosseini’s illuminating book [is] a worthy sequel to The Kite Runner.”—Los Angeles Times

 “Many of us learned much from The Kite Runner. There is much more to be learned from A Thousand Splendid Suns . . . a brave, honorable, big-hearted book”—The Washington Post Book World 

“The author’s fans won’t be disappointed with A Thousand Splendid Suns—if anything, this book shows at even better advantage Hosseini’s storytelling gifts.”—New York Daily News 

“Hosseini has created two enormously winning female characters in Mariam and Laila, Afghan women born into very different circumstances but who have the same problems.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune 

“[Hosseini] is a writer of unique sensitivities. . . . Hosseini embraces an old-fashioned storytelling unconcerned with literary hipness, unafraid of sentimentality, unworried about the sort of Dickensian coincidences that most contemporary American writers consider off-limits. . . . We are lucky . . . to have a writer of Hosseini’s storytelling ambitions interpreting his culture and history for us with another large-hearted novel. . . . Despite the unjust cruelties of our world, the heroines of A Thousand Splendid Suns do endure, both on the page and in our imagination.”—Miami Herald

About the Author

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed. He is A U.S. Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group; Reprint edition (November 25, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 159448385X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594483851
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 830L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.98 x 7.94 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 48,629 ratings

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Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini

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Khaled Hosseini is one of the most widely read and beloved novelists in the world, with over thirty eight million copies of his books sold in more than seventy countries. The Kite Runner was a major film and was a Book of the Decade, chosen by The Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian. A Thousand Splendid Suns was the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year in 2008. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee Agency and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lives in northern California.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
48,629 global ratings
A 10/10 read!
5 Stars
A 10/10 read!
Whew! One of the best and saddest books I’ve ever read. This book came highly recommended and did not disappoint.Would 💯 recommend!
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Top reviews from the United States

Peter Santaniello
5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, strong, sweet, and enduring.
Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2024
Verified Purchase
It's an amazing story about the hope that comes from knowing that even if the all the worst happens and you survive it,you look ahead at the horizon and know the worst isn't behind you. And still you have hope.

The story will drag you down and build you up and if you make it to the end you'll see that you want it to continue, even knowing that their future is our past. And in the end you'll maybe be like me and find a new definition of hope.
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OSCAR EDMUNDO DIAZ
5.0 out of 5 stars Intense, beautiful and sad
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2024
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Hosseini is master at connecting with the reader. You don't want to stop. He makes you travel to Afghanistan, empathize with the characters. Beautifully written.
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Diana Faillace Von Behren
4.0 out of 5 stars Splendid Storytelling
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2008
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Khaled Hosseini tells a good story, eliciting empathy for both his female main characters while using the recent history of his native country as a backdrop that nourishes while educating his audience about a culture and place of which few have knowledge.

Unlike his first novel, "The Kite Runner," "A Thousand Splendid Suns" does not depict an immigrant's journey from a troubled Afghanistan to the melting pot of America a la Elia Kazan's classic "America, America". Instead it focuses on two Afghan women who as contemporaries display vastly different vantage points in terms of their individual gender freedom.

Mariam, reared as a harami (illegitimate child) in the smaller village of Herat, lives on the outskirts of town with her mother, fallen woman Nana who succumbed to the attractive Jalil, rich owner of the cinema, husband of three wives and father of nine legitimate children. As a harami, Mariam quickly learns that the world of Herat and her father's smaller privileged universe proffer her only the sad wisdom of rejection and endurance. Married off as a teenager to a 40-something-year-old shoemaker named Rasheed, she finds herself in the large city of Kabul where Rasheed's imposed dress code of the burqa in public becomes an oxymoron of sorts--a comforting form of anonymity after years of self-imposed insecurity and harami notoriety and a convenient cover up for the consequential markings of his anger when she cannot provide him with a child .

Not so for Laila, Hosseini's second protagonist. Born in Kabul of educated parents, Laila's potential for success ranks her highly amongst her peers during the pro-woman Communist reign. Always encouraged to pursue her dreams, she finds that only her country's turbulent history encumbers her ambitions. After the Soviet Union's departure from Afghanistan and the mujahedeen infighting for control ensues, a stray rocket blast kills Laila's parents and through a stroke of ill-fate she becomes a member of Rasheed's household, alas her bright future eclipsed by the same dungeon of unenlightenment as that of the hapless Mariam.

The beauty of Hosseini's tale comes in his ability to draw the reader into the lives of these two women. Although introduced with a certain amount of predictable melodrama that sweeps us along with the implacable rhythm of a 1970s television mini-series, by the time Laila and Mariam physically unite in Rasheed's household we are sold, living and breathing each and every trial and tribulation. Of these, there are plenty, Hosseini paints a cruel picture of Afghanistan's intolerance towards women during not only the Taliban era, but within the confines of their supposed sanctuary of home. Intensely, we experience the beatings these women routinely receive and cower instinctively as the Taliban patrol wanders the streets of Kabul seeking out stray women to disfigure.

Shamelessly, Hosseini's technique relies on the interjection of improbable occurrences that add to the tension on the reader's heartstrings. This is nothing new in literature; Charles Dickens employs the same coincidental manipulations quite successfully in his classic serializations. However implausible, we are absorbed within the pages, reliving in nightmares some of the brutally repugnant scenes of blatant misogyny depicted so vividly in Hosseini's detailed account. We cringe and cry and await retribution. Like "The Tale of Two Cities," we are rewarded with a modern day execution where innocent love and unselfish sacrifice allow another's happiness and ultimately the irrepressible good triumph over the miserably evil.

Bottom line? Khaled Hosseini writes well in the female perspective; his account of the fictional Mariam and Laila brings home the abject suffering of the senseless mistreatment of women in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In the telling of their story, he links them with women all over the world through both the small and large events in their lives. Simultaneously, he educates his audience to the history of his native country, the differing racial factions and the indisputable effect of religion and culture on the larger terrain of the soul. Recommended.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
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Divea Mashriqi
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful heartbreak
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2024
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My ABSOLUTE favorite book of all time! This book has destroyed me, literally cannot stop thinking about it. So beautifully written! Highly recommend just have the tissues handy
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M. Lovejoy
5.0 out of 5 stars A Spectacular Read
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2024
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This novel showcases the complex lives of women dealing with the relationships within families and communities during the upheavals of political and religious cultures in the recent decades in Afghanistan. The characters are richly painted from the start, and readers are left with insight into a different yet fascinating world of love, dreams, pain, and sacrifice. It's a beautiful story that touches the soul.
One person found this helpful
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Cindy Gibbs
5.0 out of 5 stars A Thousand Splendid Suns
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2024
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A Thousand Splendid Suns is a MUST READ. It is a horrific, historical novel about women in Afghanistan. It was the book chosen by our school's ESOL committee at the book we read for March. We are going to an Afghan restaurant soon to celebrate courage, survival, and love at all costs.
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Crystal Clair
5.0 out of 5 stars EXCEPTIONAL!!
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2024
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This is certainly one of the BEST novels I've ever read!!! 💯
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KALO
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful helped me to understand Afghanistan.
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2024
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This book was actually given to me as a gift for Christmas. I usually read thrillers and mysteries, James Patterson, Alice Fenney and the likes. Actually put down what kind of books I like to read because it was a Christmas gift at work where we picked each other‘s names. So I was a little disappointed when the person did not acknowledge what I wrote down that I liked to read. I felt it was a little presumptuous of her to give me what she felt I should read. I’m glad she chose to broaden my horizons. Really opened my eyes to what’s going on in other parts of the world such as Afghanistan, we forget how blessed we are. Americans have such little complaints every single day. We forget so many other parts of the world. I’ve always been a person who’s been kind and that believes that people need to treat others as they want to be treated BUT it made me think of all the silly little complaints that me,my family and coworkers express every day about things that don’t even really matter. Beautifully written. Thank you!
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

balbina martinez aguilar
5.0 out of 5 stars Love
Reviewed in Mexico on August 17, 2023
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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
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Janice Bryant
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling!
Reviewed in Canada on June 16, 2023
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Couldn’t put it down. Very interesting, yet a hard read at times given what these poor women had to endure. Recommend!
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Zumer Riaz
5.0 out of 5 stars Mariam
Reviewed in Germany on April 7, 2024
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 I haven't read it full . I just purchased.... random lines attracts me alot .... amazing written
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars What a beautiful read!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 30, 2024
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Beautifully written, wonderful characters it felt like watching real life in front of you! Khaled Hosseini what a beautiful story teller you are sharing so much heart in every page. Telling the story of so many women that needs to be heard. Maybe the best novel I’ve ever read to date thank you!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars What a beautiful read!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 30, 2024
Beautifully written, wonderful characters it felt like watching real life in front of you! Khaled Hosseini what a beautiful story teller you are sharing so much heart in every page. Telling the story of so many women that needs to be heard. Maybe the best novel I’ve ever read to date thank you!
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Anant Kumar
5.0 out of 5 stars It is not too complex. Perfect for a beginner.
Reviewed in India on March 14, 2024
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The story is not too complex as of what I have read till chapter 5. And about the packaging it was nicely done, the cover is amazingly made and the pages are nice and thick too. All together this book is in my must read list for someone who is getting to me for a recommendation.
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Anant Kumar
5.0 out of 5 stars It is not too complex. Perfect for a beginner.
Reviewed in India on March 14, 2024
The story is not too complex as of what I have read till chapter 5. And about the packaging it was nicely done, the cover is amazingly made and the pages are nice and thick too. All together this book is in my must read list for someone who is getting to me for a recommendation.
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