Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Last night I finished reading Khaled Hosseini's latest novel (although its now been out a while)-- "A Thousand Splendid Suns". It was beautiful and tragic. Spanning over 30 years, the book follows the stories of two women living the painful, war-ravaged, daily life of Afghanistan.
Experiencing such things as loss of family, loss of friends, loss of love, loss of country... births, deaths, war, regime change, hunger, abuse, poverty, oppression, freedom, and lastly, refugee life... the whole picutre is painted of what this upended country has been through. To read the "official blurb" describing the book, click here for Barnes & Noble's notes: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-Thousand-Splendid-Suns/Khaled-Hosseini/e/9781594489501/?itm=1

I highly recommend picking it up. Separately, in the closing remarks, author Hosseini encourages readers to click on the following link: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home to check out the United Nations work to help with the growing needs and circumstances faced by the world's refugees. Check it out.

Hosseini's first book "The Kite Runner" was also a page-turner. He is a very gifted writer and paints an honest, even though tough, picutre of life in his home-country. This book was made into a movie that came out last year. It created quite a stir because of the rape scene of a young boy. So much so that the actual Afghan actors who played the boys had to be moved out of their country to escape cultural threats. Check out this article that mentioned their situation...

1 comment:

dreamingBIGdreams said...

BOTH great great books. I hope you encourage people to read these books!

See you tomorrow!