Where and when does the story takes place ?

When the story starts we are in 1974 in Herat, Afghanistan. The main character is 15 years old.
In this novel the time and place in which the main characters live has a big influance on their life and future.
Living in Afghanistan is very diffrent from living in Norway or other european countris. One of the reasons for this is that Afghanistan is a Muslim country. This book focus on young Afghan girls and women, which don`t have the same rights as women in Europe.
Mariam lives with her mother in a little and poor kolba outside of the city. Nana dosn`t work. They get food and other neccesities things from Jalil. Mariam dreams about going to school, but Nana doesn`t allow that. She says that the children will lought at her and that women like Mariam just endurer. Jalil is also afraid to take Mariam to the city because then people will find out that he has an illegitimate child. And it is a shame.

In part two of this book we meet Laila. She is about 20 years younger then Mariam. She leads another life then Mariam does. Laila lives in Kabul togheter with his mother and father. She goes to school and have friends.
In this time Soviet invesion takes place in Afghanistan. Both girls know that something is happening, but they can`t understend why. They dont`t know for exemple who a comunist is. Specially Mariam.

Women in Afghanistan can not express their own opinions, always have to do what their husbands want. A small number of women have the opportunity to attend a school. There are mens who rule in Afghanistan. Women have to stay at home, make dinner and clean the house. They have to use a burqa, and there are not a lot of places they can go alone.

In Afghanistan a women can do everything... what her husband allow.

The Thousand Splendid Suns is divided into four parts...

In the first part of this book we meet Mariam.

She is a 15 years old girl. Mariam is a illegitimate daughter of a wealthy men Jalil. She lives togheter
with her mother in a kolba, outside of the city.
Jalil visits her every Thursday.
Mariam loves having visitors at the kolba, but it is her father she is most waiting for.
Jalil lives in a big house in Herat togheter with his tree wives and nine children.
Mariam is realy happy when he comes and tell her stories about
Gul Daman, Herat and his cinema. In Mariam`s mather opinion Jalil is not such
good father like Mariams things. She knows that Jalil will dissappoint Mariam.

Mariam wants his father to take her to his cinema on hers 15 birthday. He promises to do so,
but when the next day he did not show up, Mariam decides to go to his house by herself...

Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is written by Khaled Hosseini.
Khaled Hosseini was born in 1965 in Afghanistan. He moved to the United States when he was 15.
He debuted in 2003 with The Kite Runner. This novel became an international bestseller and more
then 12 millions copies of this book have been sold in the whole world.
His second success is the novel The Thousend Splendid Suns, which was realised in 2007.
The book was the bestselling novel in the UK, with more then 700,000 copies sold.