A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns
book data
70,042 ratings, 4.31 average rating, 14,986 reviews (more data...)
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published
May 22nd 2007 (first published 2006) by Riverhead

binding
Hardcover, 372 pages

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setting
Afghanistan

isbn
1594489505    (isbn13: 9781594489501)

description
After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautifu...more




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Lucy
12/04/07
Lucy rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2008
For the last two months I have been putting off reading this book. For starters, I bought the book at an airport in Taiwan, which meant it didn't have a due date which meant it took a backseat to many books that I didn't have the luxury of reading whenever.

Additionally, because I've heard so much about this book already, I almost didn't want to read it at all. I've heard that it's depressing, that it's not as good as The Kite Runner, and that it's basically a novel about the brutal t...more
Like this review?   yes   (123 people liked it)
  12 comments

Don
07/17/07
Don rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in August, 2007
Suns is part historical fiction, part social commentary and part kick-in-the-throat storytelling. A friend of mine said that Suns is a metaphor for Afghanistan but I found it illustrative of Afghanistan's weary and violent history; I found it brutally educational. When I had studied in Germany in 1987, I lived in an international dormitory. I asked my neighbor, Hyder, where he was from, he leaned in to me with a devilish grin and hissed “Afghanistan!” While others found this amusing, the...more
Like this review?   yes   (21 people liked it)
  1 comment

Rachel
03/16/08
Rachel rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in March, 2008
recommended to Rachel by: middle class liberal white woman
recommends it for: middle class liberal white women
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Like this review?   yes   (23 people liked it)
  4 comments

Anu
08/29/07
Anu rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in March, 2008
August 2007

I was riding in a cab in Bombay recently, and a bookseller on foot approached me at a traffic light with a stack of books. I did my best not to look at the boy, but I couldn't help it. He was waving several books in my face and something caught my eye. I thought my glance was discreet, but he saw me look.. and it was game over. The light turned green right then and the boy starts running with the cab yelling 'Memsahib! Memsahib!'. We're picking up speed.. I'm so scared he'...more
Like this review?   yes   (20 people liked it)
  5 comments

Khaya
09/13/08
Khaya rated it: 2 of 5 stars

bookshelves: intense-sad, islamicwomen
recommended to Khaya by: Shelly
recommends it for: People who actually thought "The Kite Runner" was a good book
To my editor:

Khaled here. As I was reviewing my final draft of “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” some questions occurred to me.

1. Could I make the characters any less complex? Despite my efforts, I feel I haven’t fully achieved the one-dimensionality my readers seemed to love in “The Kite Runner.” Specifically, I’m afraid I may have given Rassan one or two potentially sympathetic moments early on despite his overall abusive personality (although I more than make...more
Like this review?   yes   (19 people liked it)
  22 comments

Janeciab
12/15/07
Janeciab rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2007
My review from the Los Angeles Times Book Review:

Afghani-born novelist Khaled Hosseini enthralled readers with “The Kite Flyer,” his first novel, which was constructed around the friendship between Amir, a privileged Pashtun Sunni born in Kabul, and his boyhood friend and servant Hassan, a Shi’a, ethnic Hazara and master kite runner who, in the course of running to ground the coveted last fallen kite of the winter tournament in 1975, has a violent encounter that changes both b...more
Like this review?   yes   (15 people liked it)
  4 comments

Erie
01/13/08
Erie rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: fiksi
Read in February, 2008
The story sets in a "war zone" Afghanistan which is Hosseini does his good job provides me with a glimpse of the history of Afghanistan. Although I feel the story moves slowly in the 1st and 2nd part of the book. The story is really flowing for me when Mariam and Laila lives become intertwined. From this point this book simply unputdownable. Mariam and Laila forged an alliance and harboring resentment against a violent and brutal Rasheed whose happen to be their husband (I really want ...more
Like this review?   yes   (11 people liked it)
  20 comments

Ruth
01/25/08
Ruth rated it: 5 of 5 stars

bookshelves: fiction
Read in October, 2007
recommended to Ruth by: Cara
recommends it for: Teens and up
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Like this review?   yes   (12 people liked it)
  3 comments

Tom
12/10/07
Tom rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Book Review

A Thousand Splendid Suns
By Khaled Hosseini

Reviewed by Tom Carrico

It’s amazing that this author has the #1 fiction paperback (The Kite Runner) and the #1 fiction hardback (A Thousand Splendid Suns) on “The New York Times” bestseller list. The Kite Runner has sold over four millions copies since its release in 2003. It is a hauntingly written novel set in war-torn Afghanistan. It is exceptionally well plotted and opens the window on a p...more
Like this review?   yes   (11 people liked it)
  2 comments

Beth
03/17/08
Beth rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in April, 2008
Seems that this book and its predecessor, The Kite Runner, has been getting a lot of buzz on the Internet lately — but based on the reviews, I’d shied away from reading either. Most people seemed to agree that these stories of Afghan civil war were “hard” to read — not because of lengthy, erudite descriptions (quite to the contrary, actually; Splendid Suns, at least, was basically well-written with plenty of dialogue to drive the reader through the storyline) but because of the topic. ...more
Like this review?   yes   (8 people liked it)
  3 comments

Jennifer Joelle
06/02/07
Jennifer Joelle rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in June, 2007
recommends it for: everyone
I must admit that I had some trepidation in starting this novel, along with hope and excitement.

Hosseini's first book, "The Kite Runner" is quite truthfully, one of the best novels I have ever had the pleasure of reading and I can state most elatedly that "A Thousand Splendid Suns" will take it's place amongst those stories that I cherish. I was apprehensive in starting this book simply because I was worried that I would be disappointed; that it would not be cl...more
Like this review?   yes   (8 people liked it)
  1 comment

Daniel
02/22/09
Daniel rated it: 2 of 5 stars (review of isbn 159448385X)

Read in March, 2009
recommended to Daniel by: Rose
It's apparently becoming something of a tradition for me to trash books that are not only widely loved and praised, but were specifically recommended to me by friends. Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splended Suns," I'm sorry to say, is going to get the same treatment. (Forgive me, Rose.) "Splendid Suns" has been so widely read by this point, I won't bother recounting the story, and instead simply list my objections:

- Hosseini seems incapable of creating characters ...more
Like this review?   yes   (11 people liked it)
  7 comments

Eastofoz
09/14/08
Eastofoz rated it: 5 of 5 stars

recommends it for: Readers looking for a highly emotional soul-ripping read
Another exceptional book by Hosseini. It’ll rip out your heart, have you crying buckets and buckets of tears while marveling at the triumph of the human spirit through severe and virtually unimaginable adversity as well as pure hell.

The writing is absolutely beautiful. The pictures he paints with his words are so vivid that everything from the fun everyday life to the squalor that war brings to the ordinary person just flashes before your eyes like a movie. There are some parts...more
Like this review?   yes   (6 people liked it)
  2 comments

Gana
10/11/07
Gana rated it: 3 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2007
I was disappointed with the quality of this novel after reading his first brilliant novel "Kite Runner". For sure, the story is tragic, painful and unusual for many people, but I don't see the beauty of a novel here; Khaled Hosseini does not sufficiently open internal worlds of his characters; there are not enough descriptions of senses, feelings, thoughts, perceptions and judgments of characters. Events move forcefully and fast: Mariam marries to older man ...she was scared and shudde...more
Like this review?   yes   (6 people liked it)
  8 comments

Abby
10/10/07
Abby rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: favorites
Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in November, 2007
recommends it for: any one interested in a damn good story
A Thousand Splendid Suns is not a happy book. The lives of the two main characters mirror, internalize and reflect back a metaphor for Afghanistan's brutal, weary, bruised history. Whereas I read The Kite Runner as a retelling of Les Miserables, A Thousand Splendid Suns stands in its own, telling the story of Miriam and Laila, wives of abusive and manipulative Rasheed.

I have a hard time comparing this novel to The Kite Runner and feel that the comparison does a disservice to both ...more
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Melissa
05/03/07
Melissa rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in May, 2007
I tore through this book. Literally read it in about eight hours (my day off). It was an entertaining read, and sad, but I wasn't uplifted by it; it lacked profundity. It's not one of the books that I would read again and again. But maybe that's got to do with the fact that I prefer happier stories.

No one will deny that women have always, and continue to, have it hard. Life sucks for women, and it sucks harder if you live in a war-torn, third world country. Mariam is the bastard chi...more
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  2 comments

Philip
08/20/08
Philip rated it: 3 of 5 stars

I read A Thousand Splendid Suns having just finished Kite Runner. I would like the opportunity to live life again (who wouldn’t?), if only to have a chance of reversing the order of this experience. I suspect that had I read A Thousand Splendid Suns first then none of the criticisms I raise about the book would even have been imagined, let alone expressed. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a wonderful book, a compelling and gut-wrenching story of two women, Mariam and Laila, who share a husband thro...more
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Corbin
04/08/08
Corbin rated it: 3 of 5 stars

bookshelves: fiction
Read in April, 2008
Afghanistan: this crossroads between the East & the West has been crippled by a continuous civil war beginning in the late 1970's. Since then, the ongoing war has caused considerable changes and for all the residents--especially the women in the capital Kabul where much of the violence has taken place.

I looked forward to seeing the changes the female characters were forced into when the Taliban became a stronger politico-religious force in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, where...more
Like this review?   yes   (4 people liked it)
  3 comments

Michael
12/04/07
Michael added it

This book would bore a stone to tears. I mean, it is really, terribly boring. Toward the end it felt like I was going to go crazy if it wasn't over soon. Like when I tried to read that doorstop "War and Peace", or "Ethan Frome" from high school, or "The Scarlet Letter". Arrrgggghh!

That said, I think this is a good writer, maybe a great writer, and that is why I did finish it. I liked Kite Runner so much. And this one made many of the same points in a slo...more
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LeAnn
11/06/07
LeAnn rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in October, 2007
recommends it for: Contemporary fiction readers
I requested A Thousand Splendid Suns from my local library, and after waiting four months, I decided to request The Kite Runner since it was Hosseini's first book. I ended up getting both at the same time, but I listen to TKR in the car while commuting to my daughter's school,so I finished ATSS first. Perhaps that's the right order because several readers on GoodReads have worried that the second novel couldn't compare favorably to the first.

I liked Laila and Maryam's story a lot and...more
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A Thousand Splendid Suns (Paperback)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Hardcover)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Hardcover)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Paperback)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Paperback)







quotes from this book

"Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings." More quotes...


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