Khaled Hosseini’s first novel, The Kite Runner, was the publishing sensation of post-9/11 Afghanistan, winning millions of readers for its tender portrayal of two men set against decades of conflict and harsh Taliban rule.
Four years later the writer is venturing under the burka with A Thousand Splendid Suns, his keenly anticipated second novel that follows the trials and triumphs of two Afghan women over the same period.
“What do we really know about the women behind the veil?” said Hosseini, whose family fled Afghanistan for the United States in 1976. “What are their inner lives like? What are their thoughts? What are their hopes and dreams?” His publisher clearly dreams of a second sales avalanche. In 2003 the author faced near empty bookshops during a promotional tour for The Kite Runner.
But rave word-of-mouth reviews travelled through book clubs and it climbed into The New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for two years.
Now eight million copies have been published and a movie adaptation — filmed in western China because Afghanistan remains too dangerous — is due later this year.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, taken from a phrase in a 17th century Persian poem, follows a similar narrative arc. It chronicles the lives of Laila and Mariam, two women flung together by forced marriage to the same man.
Initially hostile, their friendship flourishes against the backdrop of four decades of tumultuous Afghan history.
The book received strong early reviews and entered amazon.com‘s top-20 list before publication.
Hosseini, the 42-year-old son of an exiled Afghan diplomat, got the idea for the book during a two-week trip to Kabul in 2003. “I began to understand the devastating effect that anarchy and oppression had on these women,” he said. “I heard about women who had been raped, attacked, humiliated and imprisoned. I heard about women who had seen their husbands blown up, their children starved to death, who had to make these incredibly difficult choices.” — Â