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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2007, 384 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2008, 384 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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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.
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling
that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, 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.
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.
1
Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami.
It happened on a Thursday. It must have, because Mariam remembered that she
had been restless and preoccupied that day, the way she was only on Thursdays,
the day when Jalil visited her at the kolba. To pass the time until the moment
that she would see him at last, crossing the knee-high grass in the clearing and
waving, Mariam had climbed a chair and taken down her mother's Chinese tea set.
The tea set was the sole relic that Mariam's mother, Nana, had of her own
mother, who had died when Nana was two. Nana cherished each blue-and-white
porcelain piece, the graceful curve of the pot's spout, the hand-painted finches
and chrysanthemums, the dragon on the sugar bowl, meant to ward off evil.
It was this last piece that slipped from Mariam's fingers, that fell to the
wooden floorboards of the kolba and shattered.
When Nana saw the bowl, her face flushed red and her upper lip shivered, and ...
Some readers may find A Thousand Splendid Suns a little too melodramatic and sentimental for their tastes. This reviewer started off cynical but was entirely won over by the end - starting the book in the evening and waking up before dawn to finish it, reading by fading flashlight as the sun rose and the pages blurred through the tears...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Afghanistan lies on the historically important trading routes between the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. As a result of numerous invasions and migrations it is made up of many different ethnic groups including Baluch, Chahar Aimak, Turkmen, Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Nuristani, Arab, Kirghiz, Pashai and Persian.
Historically, the Pashtun nationality has been the most dominant representing about 50% of the total population. Islam was brought to Afghanistan in the eighth century by Arabs, and the vast majority of the country today are Muslims. After Arab rule there was a period of relative independence when semi-independent states began to form, but these were crushed by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Following the ...
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