by Alison Moss

Created on: March 11, 2009

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" is the second novel by the bestselling author Khaled Hosseini who wrote "The Kite Runner." The book was a Richard and Judy bestseller and was the book chosen by my bookclub recently to read. Having already read and enjoyed the Kite Runner I was keen to see if this second book was as good.

The book like the previous one is set in Afghanistan a country that is close to the authors heart as this is where he was born but fled to the US in 1980. The story is told through the eyes of the two main characters Mariam and Laila. Mariam lives with her mother and spends her whole childhood looking forward to the weekly visits from her father. Mariam is a "harami" she was born illegitimately and her presence is an embarrassment to her fathers family. Mariam is married off to an older man called Rasheed when she is only 15 years old and moves to Kabul and her life changes completely. Many years later she makes an unlikely friendship with Laila a local teenager. The two are completely different people they differ in age, background and class yet they end up in the same circumstances and the two become very close shaping each others lives. As Afghanistan goes through many political changes and war breaks out their lives become a daily struggle to survive. The story tells of their friendship and what they are prepared to do to help each other.

I think this book was a really good book. It's hard to say whether you can really enjoy reading a book like this because some of the bits in the book are quite distressing and upsetting but it is a book that I am glad I read. It's a real page turner and you want to read on to find out what happens all the while also dreading turning the page because you worry about what is going to happen.

I think Hosseini has captured the hopes, fears and emotions of the women beautifully. If I had read this book without knowing who the author was I would have been surprised to have found that it was a man writing the book. I was able to identify with the characters in this book and try to imagine what life would have been like living as a woman in Afghanistan. I liked that Hosseini included dates during the book so you could follow how old the characters were and where in history events were occurring. It also brought the story more alive to me as Laila was born less than 2 years after I was. Yes she is a fictional character but her story is similar to many other women living in that country at that time and women's lives in

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