Just before I started reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I found a useful resource of background knowledge about Afghanistan and the time period, which you can find here. The source is meant for a teacher, but I was able to weed out some information and links.
The book starts during the 1960’s and follows the story of a young woman named Mariam who is forced to marry a shoe-maker. In all the synopses I have read, the book revolves around her and another character, Leila, but she has not come into the story yet. The author of the book is Afghan-born so he obviously knows what he is talking about and everything should be authentic. I assume that the story will have something to do with the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1970’s and possibly lead up to the Taliban. At first I thought that his occasional use of Arabic words would be confusing but after reading a word used in multiple sentences I am able to figure out what the word means. I'm surprised at how many words I actually knew when I first read a word!
So far I have read about 30 pages of the book and it is very entertaining. From reading the first page or two I was skeptical that I would actually enjoy the book, but little did I realize that I was slowly becoming very interested in it. I am looking forward to reading a story from a different point of view about a different subject.
I've heard a lot of positive feedback about this book, and actually followed another person's blog series about this book in the past. I'm excited to see your take on the book, as I am told there is plenty to talk about!
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