A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hossieni

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Chosen by Jo

Written from the perspective of two Afghan women trapped within their country’s strict regime, this book focuses on the friendship between Mariam and Laila who are wives of the same man.

Mariam is an illegitimate child to a wealthy man and at 15 years old is given away in disgrace to Rasheed, an old shoemaker. She disappoints him by failing to produce a child, and so he takes on another wife, an orphaned 14 year old from within the neighbourhood who is already pregnant.

Set over a 30 year period, from the 1960s to the 1990s, the narrative covers the Soviet occupation to the Taliban control – a country always in turmoil. Rasheed mimics the violence and uncertainty of Afghanistan in his home and the reader is embroiled in stories of domestic abuse, the brutally of war and the oppression of women. However, redemption, hope and friendship are also strong themes which give the reader optimism for the people who have survived these conflicts.

That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power … the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.

✎ “Harrowing but addictive. You need to be ready for a book like this – the abuse, oppression and violence will cause a few tears to be shed. But at the heart of the story are two feisty, inspirational women who evoke a sense of hope and heroism. If you do decide to proceed, you won’t regret it.” – Rachel

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Published 2007
Riverhead Books
284 pages