Khaled Hosseini: A Thousand Splendid Suns

This book is Afghan writer Khaled Hosseini’s second novel and if you know anything about Hosseini you probably have already guessed that this is not light-hearted vacation reading.  As with his first novel, Kite Runner, Afghan history including the rise of the Muhajideen, figure prominently.  The novel follows the story of two women from very different backgrounds whose lives are intertwined in the chaos and bloodshed that accompany and follow the civil war.  As with a lot of the novels being published about Iran and Afghanistan these days, the plot revolves around juxtaposing the relatively normal lives the main characters were leading prior to the civil war with the post-civil war repression that the world now thinks of (thought of) as the norm in these countries.  Hosseini’s writing is powerful and although you think you know the story, you realize that the devil is in the details; in this case details of domestic abuse (physical and emotional), of virtual house arrest and of smart and capable women repressed past the will to live.  This book is not about politics or religion. It is just about the lives of two women who had perfectly ordinary expectations of how they wanted to lead their lives that were destroyed. 

The Amazon link to the book is here: http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Splendid-Suns-Khaled-Hosseini/dp/1594489505