A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

This one has been sitting on my shelf for a while now and I'm not entirely sure why it took me so long to get round to it. I read Hosseini's The Kite Runner for my A-Level essay (who didn't?!) and remember absolutely loving it despite harrowing content, and this book achieved a similar reaction from me. The book is set in Afghanistan and begins with the character of Mariam, a young girl who wants nothing more than to gain the affection of her estranged father who abandoned her and her mother. When tragedy strikes the family, Mariam is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed, a man far older than her. When he realises that she can not bear him a child, he becomes violent and dismissive towards his young wife, treating her with cruelty and intimidation.

Nearly two decades later, when a young girl in the village, Laila, finds herself in trouble, the women’s lives intertwine in an intimate and uncomfortable way - but ultimately, a beautiful friendship emerges. The Taliban soon take over and the streets are swarmed with men who impose surveillance, brutality and curfews to women, rendering them effectively under house arrest and at times near starvation. This book highlights the courage and extreme bravery and sacrifice of the women who are treated as second-class citizens, and prove themselves to be heroic in the face of the horrors they must endure.

I sobbed like a baby at the end of this book. Hosseini has a way of writing such beautiful characters who you become extremely attached to within just a few pages. There are some horrifying and shocking moments which can be highly upsetting, but there are also moments of laughter, companionship, hope and beauty. Again, this is another story which I will struggle to forget for a long time to come, and I am pleased to say that his second novel is even better than his first!