May Books 1) A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

[nwhyte]

Hosseini's second novel tells the story of two women married to the same man in Kabul over three decades of Afghanistan's turbulent history. I did not think it was as good as The Kite Runner; the writing seemed much less spontaneous, the history lessons for the reader intrusively didactic, the plot pretty obvious (and even a bit twee in places).

Comments

[saare_snowqueen]

Funny about that. I also just finished it and was thinking of doing a post, contrasting that, Snow (Orhan Pamuk)- which I hated and Le Clezio's Wandering Star, as all three deal with women caught up in the miasma of the Middle(almost)East.

I wasn't crazy about the Kite Runner - had trouble finishing it.

[yiskah]

Interesting - I much preferred it to The Kite Runner, which I saw as more cliched.

Splendid Suns

[anonymous]

The history lesson was a bit intrusive, but he was trying to get whole lifetimes in and needed to reset the context regularly, so I didn't mind it too much. Didn't read The Kite Runner so I can't compare, but found it utterly absorbing and horrible throughout.

Ivan