A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini ¬‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is a novel by Khaled Hosseini who was born in Afghanistan in 1965 to a diplomat father and a teacher mother. The family was granted political asylum in the US after Afghanistan had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The family moved to California in 1980. Hosseini earned his medical degree and began practicing medicine. ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ published in 2007 is his second novel after a great success of ‘The Kite Runner’. The story takes place in Afghanistan in the final quarter of 20th century and the first few years of this one. The events cover the decades from the rules of Afghan Kings, the Soviet invasion, the civil war of the Mujahideens, the takeover of the Taliban and the eventual liberation by the Allied forces. The novel tells the story of two Afghan women Mariam and Leila. Mariam, the elder of the two, is ‘a harami’ the illegitimate daughter of Jalil, a prosperous businessman and one of his housekeepers. After a tragic death of her mother, when Mariam is only 15, her father marries her off to Rasheed, a much older Kabul shoemaker. After a few relatively peaceful years, after it becomes apparent that Mariam will not bear Rasheed the son he expected, his behavior escalates into constant verbal and physical abuse. At this time her life intersects with Laila’s, whose parents were killed in a rocket attack, as the family was preparing to flee the country to Pakistan. When Mariam and Rasheed come to the girl’s aid, she is approximately the same age as Mariam at the time of her marriage to Rasheed. Very soon it becomes clear that Rasheed sees in her the opportunity to have a family that Mariam was unable to give him. He weds the girl and brings her to his household. At first Mariam resents the girl but, as time goes by, the two woman

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