A Thousand Splendid Suns

In case you’re wondering whether A Thousand Splendid Suns is as good as The Kite Runner, here’s the answer: No. It’s better * Washington Post *
A masterful narrative … He is a storyteller of dizzying power * Evening Standard *
Hosseini has that rare thing, a Dickensian knack for storytelling * Daily Telegraph *
A gripping tale … It is, too a powerful portrait of female suffering and endurance under the Taliban * Daily Mail *
A beautifully crafted and disturbing story … As unforgettable as The Kite Runner, this novel places us in Afghanistan with an open heart – Isabel Allende
A heartfelt saga that encompasses romance and melodrama, personal and political intrigue, the onslaught of war and dispossession * Independent *
If he cut his teeth by writing about his countrymen, it is the plight of Afghanistan’s women that has brought him to realise his full powers as a novelist * The Times *
A Thousand Splendid Suns has all the particularity of a novel and all the force of a fable … It reads, in many ways, like an old-fashioned romance adventure * Mail on Sunday *
Hosseini has done it again … A Thousand Splendid Suns is a triumph. In Khaled Hosseini, Afghanistan has at last found a voice * Financial Times *

Khaled Hosseini’s reputation as an accomplished storyteller has already been well and truly established with The Kite Runner, his celebrated debut novel. Brought up in a tradition of storytelling, Hosseini has described this tradition as first and foremost what writing novels is about. It is a quality central to A Thousand Splendid Suns which seamlessly blends the compelling narratives of Mariam and Laila with the deeply troubled history of Afghanistan over the past thirty years.

With his first novel Hosseini had wanted to give a Western public assailed with media images of war-torn Afghanistan, a glimpse of the country he remembered from childhood and to dispel some of the misconceptions that some of his adopted countrymen had about it. It is the role of women that Hosseini has chosen to explore in his second novel and he does so vividly through the stories of Mariam and Laila, two women separated by a generation but united by an unbreakable bond of friendship.

He returned to Afghanistan after a twenty-seven year absence, following the fall of the Taliban, partly to satisfy a yearning to see his homeland again but also to find out how it was faring.

Khaled Hosseini was born in 1965 in Kabul where his father was a diplomat and his mother taught Farsi and history. After the 1978 coup and the subsequent Russian invasion, the family fled Afghanistan for the United States, receiving political asylum in 1980. They settled in San Jose, California where his father found work as a driving instructor. Hosseini is now a physician and lives with his wife and two children in Northern California.

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