Afghanistan, swept by the ravages of war.

Surviving the cruel times by turning despair into hope
A splendid and beautiful story of two women

Mariam, who lives in a remote cabin with her mother, who was her father's maid, has only one wish: to live with her father.
For Mariam, who was born illegitimate and lived isolated from people, her father is her only connection to the world.
One day, Mariam goes to her father's house to meet him.
And as she waits all night for him to turn away from her at the front gate, she realizes her miserable situation.
Mariam returns home, but what awaits her is her mother, hanged from a tree.
Mariam's mother, who had endured the humiliation of not being treated as a wife, took her own life in despair at being abandoned by her children.
After her mother's death, Mariam is sold into marriage at the young age of fifteen to the forty-five-year-old shoemaker Rashid, led by her father and his wives who are trying to pass her off.


Although it was a forced marriage, Mariam gradually heals the wounds of being abandoned under her husband's shadow, but that sense of stability does not last long.
Her life becomes horrific with repeated miscarriages and the beatings of her husband, Rashid, who reveals his violent nature over time.
A life where she cannot dream of the future, Mariam endures the harsh times without any dreams or hope.
One day, during the ongoing bombings of the civil war, a bomb falls on the house next door that Mariam was watching with admiration from afar, leaving only a thirteen-year-old girl, the daughter of an intellectual, alive.
The girl's name is Layla.
Rashid rescues the girl and takes care of her with Mariam.
Unlike Mariam, who only thought of taking care of the poor child, Rashid, who had always been attracted to Laila's beautiful appearance, took her as his second wife.

Born into an intellectual family and already in love with her lover, Laila accepts her marriage to Rashid after the death of her parents, followed by the news of her lover's death, and the child growing in her womb.
After marriage, Laila starts a new life, disguising her newborn daughter as Rashid's child.
That's how Mariam and Laila met.
At first, Mariam cannot accept Laila's intrusion into her life.
However, after a new life is born, their relationship changes.
They raise their children together and experience true familial love even in the face of their husband's violence.
And the two of them find the courage to stand up to their husband's violence together.

Afghanistan's modern history is stained with blood and tears.
The lives of the Afghan people were devastated by the invasion of the former Soviet Union, the collapse of the monarchy, a civil war between warlords, the Taliban regime that took up arms to overthrow them, and the war with the United States.
Neighbors who had been close to each other are leaving their hometowns one by one and fleeing to other countries, and those who remain live each day in danger of their lives in a dangerous situation where a bomb could explode at any moment.
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" is the story of those left behind in that ruined land, especially women who are socially vulnerable in Islamic society.


Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan exile who burst onto the American literary scene with just one debut novel, said in an interview that he was inspired to write this book by “conversations with local Afghan women.”
The lives of the protagonists born with strange fates in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns are not only a novel, but also the real lives of Afghan women.
The two women, who become the wives of a demonic man, overcome his violence and poverty together with love and friendship, even in the beastly life imprisoned under the banner of their husband.
And the two women's strong love and efforts to protect the new life born in the land of death reach a great love that goes beyond humanity.

Afghanistan is a strange and dangerous land for us, where terrorism and kidnapping occur as if it were our daily meal, but we know absolutely nothing about the people living there.
In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini appeals to us to pay more attention to the fact that there are people like us in Afghanistan whose human rights deserve to be protected.
Their current state of living in a barren land that they cannot abandon or leave, yet still dreaming of a better tomorrow than today, resonates deeply and renews the lives of all human beings.


Khaled Hosseini's masterpiece, now available in a revised edition in 2022
The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini, through his representative works The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, unflinchingly portrays the tragic fate and miserable reality of the Afghan people.
If his first novel, The Kite Runner, was a story about Afghanistan told from the perspective of an Afghan immigrant who left behind the tragedy of Afghanistan and came to the United States, then A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story that shows the reality of Afghanistan from the perspective of a local who had to stay behind and endure the tragedy with his whole body.
While the former is about the love between a father and a son, brothers, the latter is a story about a mother and a daughter, and the love of women who must unite to endure and fight against violence at home or on the streets.


The tragic lives of the Afghan people depicted in the novel are so miserable that it is sometimes difficult to read.
This is especially true now, with the withdrawal of US troops in 2021 and the return of the Taliban to power, which has turned the clock back in Afghanistan.
But Khaled Hosseini sublimates pain and tragedy to create a story of love and redemption.
Hosseini is a remarkable storyteller who has transformed a story of betrayal and violence into a human drama of love and redemption, elevating the story of Afghanistan, a country relentlessly plagued by war and terror, into a universal story that resonates with the world.

Author's Note

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" is my own small tribute to the courage, perseverance, and vitality of Afghan women who have lived difficult lives.
I wanted to recreate the humanity of Afghan women behind the veil in the space of a novel.
I guess I wanted to reveal the 'thousand splendid suns' within them.
_Khaled Hosseini