A Thousand Splendid Suns

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A Thousand Splendid Suns
First edition cover
Author	Khaled Hosseini
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Riverhead Books(and Simon & Schuster audio CD)
Publication date	May 22, 2007
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback) and audio CD
Pages	384 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 978-1-59448-950-1 (first edition, hardcover)
OCLC Number	85783363
Dewey Decimal	813/.6 22
LC Classification	PS3608.O832 T56 2007

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan author Khaled Hosseini, his second, following his bestselling 2003 debut, The Kite Runner. It focuses on the tumultuous lives of two Afghan women and how their lives cross each other, spanning from the 1960s to 2003. The book was released on May 22, 2007,^[1] and received favorable prepublication reviews from Kirkus,^[2] Publishers Weekly^[3], Library Journal,^[4] and Booklist, as well as reaching #2 on Amazon.com's bestseller list before its release.

Contents 1 Title 2 Plot 3 Characters 4 Critical reaction 5 Film 6 Footnotes 7 External links

[edit] Title

The title of the book refers to a phrase from the poem "Kabul", by the 17th-century Persian poet Saib-e-Tabrizi.^[5] The poem is translated into English by Josphine Davis. The English translation is not a literal translation of the original.

[edit] Plot

The novel is divided into four parts. The first part focuses exclusively on Mariam, the second and fourth parts focus on Laila, and the third part switches focus between Mariam and Laila with each chapter.

Mariam lives in a kolba with her mother. Jalil, her father, is a wealthy man who lives in town with three wives and several children. Because Mariam is his illegitimate daughter, she cannot live with them, but Jalil visits her every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam wants her father to take her to see Pinocchio at his movie theater. When he does not show up, she hikes into town and goes to his house. He refuses to see her, and she ends up sleeping on the porch. In the morning, Mariam returns home to find that her mother has hanged herself out of fear that her daughter has deserted her. Mariam is then taken to live in her father's house. Jalil arranges for her to be married to Rasheed, a shoemaker from Kabul who is thirty years her senior. In Kabul, Mariam quickly becomes pregnant 7 times, but the child miscarries each time, and Rasheed becomes abusive towards his young bride.

In the same neighborhood lived a girl named Laila and a boy named Tariq, who are close friends, but careful of social boundaries. War comes to Afghanistan, and Kabul is bombarded by rocket attacks. Tariq's family decides to leave the city, and the emotional farewell between Laila and Tariq ends with them making love. Laila's family also decides to leave Kabul, but as they are packing a rocket destroys the house, kills her parents, and severely injures Laila. Laila is taken in by Rasheed and Mariam.

After recovering from her injuries, Laila discovers that she is pregnant with Tariq's child. She arranges to marry Rasheed, who is eager to have a young and attractive second wife. Laila, who has been told that Tariq is dead, gives birth to Aziza, a daughter. Rasheed is unhappy and suspicious, and he becomes more abusive. Mariam and Laila eventually become confidants. They plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul, but they are caught at the bus station. Rasheed beats them and deprives them of water for several days, almost killing Aziza.

A few years later, Laila gives birth to Zalmai, Rasheed's son. The Taliban has risen to power, and there is a drought, and living conditions in Kabul become poor. Rasheed's workshop burns down, and he is forced to take jobs he is ill-suited for. The family sends Aziza to an orphanage. Then one day, Tariq appears outside the house. He and Laila are reunited, and their passions flare anew. When Rasheed returns home from work, Zalmai tells his father about the visitor. Rasheed starts to savagely beat Laila, so Mariam kills Rasheed with a shovel. Laila and Tariq leave for Pakistan with the children. Mariam confesses to killing her husband and is executed. After the fall of the Taliban, Laila and Tariq return to Afghanistan. They stop in the village where Mariam was raised, and discover a package that Mariam's father left behind for her: a videotape of Pinocchio, a small pile of money and a letter. Laila reads the letter and discovers that Jalil regretted sending Mariam away. Laila and Tariq return to Kabul and fix up the orphanage, where Laila works as a teacher. Laila is pregnant with her third child, and if it is a girl, it is suggested she will be named Mariam.

[edit] Characters

In order of appearance:

• Mariam, an ethnic Tajik born in Herat, 1959. She is the illegitimate child of Jalil and Nana, and suffers shame throughout her childhood because of the circumstances of her birth.
• Nana is Mariam's mother, who used to be a servant in Jalil's house and had an affair with him. She hangs herself when Mariam is fifteen, after Mariam journeys to Jalil's house on her birthday, which Nana perceives to be betrayal.
• Mullah Faizullah is Mariam's elderly Koran teacher and friend. He dies of natural causes in 1989.
• Jalil is Mariam's father, a wealthy man who had three wives before he had an affair with Nana. He marries Mariam to Rasheed after Nana's death, but later regrets sending her away. Long after leaving Herat, Mariam finds out that he died of natural causes in 1987.
• Laila is an ethnic Tajik. Born in 1978 to Hakim and Fariba, she is a beautiful and intelligent girl coming from a family in which the father is university-educated and a teacher. Her life becomes tied to Mariam's when she marries Rasheed as his second wife.
• Hakim is Laila's father. He is a well-educated and progressive school teacher. He is killed in a rocket explosion along with Fariba.
• Fariba is Laila's mother. In Part One, during her brief meeting with Mariam, she is shown as cheerful, but her happy nature is brutally disrupted when her two sons, Ahmad and Noor, leave home to go to war and are later killed. She spends nearly all of her time in bed mourning her sons until the Mujahideen are victorious. She is killed in a rocket explosion along with Hakim.
• Rasheed is an ethnic Pashtun, a shoemaker, and the antagonist of the novel. He marries Mariam through an arrangement with Jalil and later marries Laila as well. After years of domestic abuse towards the two women, Mariam bludgeons Rasheed to death with a shovel during a violent struggle.
• Tariq, an ethnic Pashtun born in 1976, is a boy who grew up in Kabul with Laila. He lost a leg to a land mine at age 5. They eventually evolve from best friends to lovers and, after a decade of separation, are married and expecting a child by the end of the novel.
• Aziza is the daughter of Laila and Tariq, conceived when Laila was 14. Her conception incites Laila to marry Rasheed when the news of Tariq's alleged death arrives in order to hide the child's illegitimacy. Aziza is born in the spring of 1993 and becomes a peacemaking figure between Mariam and Laila when her cries for Mariam's attention trigger Mariam's maternal instinct and respect for Laila.
• Zalmai, born in September 1997, is Laila and Rasheed's spoiled son. Despite the conditions presented onto his mother and figurative aunt (Mariam), Zalmai idolizes Rasheed and is unaware of the fact that Mariam killed him. At the end of the novel, Zalmai continuously asks about Rasheed to Laila, who lies to him saying he simply left for some time. After initially blaming Tariq for his father's mysterious disappearance, he comes to accept Tariq as a father-figure.

[edit] Critical reaction

Time magazine's Lev Grossman placed it at number three in the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007, and praised it as a "dense, rich, pressure-packed guide to enduring the unendurable."^[6][7] Jonathan Yardley said in the Washington Post "Book World": "Just in case you're wondering whether Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns is as good as The Kite Runner, here's the answer: No. It's better."^[8]

[edit] Film

Columbia Pictures owns the movie rights to the novel, but production has yet to begin; Steven Zaillian is currently writing a screenplay and is also slated to direct, Scott Rudin has signed on as a producer. ^[9]

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Khaled Hosseini's official website
• Review of 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'