I made myself read this book because it is on the Booktalk list.
I agree with Garicker, it's not bad, it is informative, but as fiction it is miles away from The Kite Runner.
If it hadn't been on the list I wouldn't have made it past the first chapters, which are very slow. The book gets more interesting as you read, but as I saw that no one was volunteering to monitor the discussion on this book I thought I could see why: the book is worth reading, but the message is simple and clear, I personally couln't think of discussion topics.
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
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Ophelia
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Moderator for this novel.
Well, since nobody has volunteered for this book I'll do it if this can help to get things going.
I would have liked to wait until I had participated in at least one discussion before offering to lead one, and I would have preferred to start with one I feel enthusiastic about rather than one I just think is OK.
On the plus side, I've got more time on my hands at the moment than I would normally have, so this has also influenced my decision to volunteer.
Once you have thought about my offer, is there anybody who could volunteer to answer questions I could have later about organizing the discussion?
And for now, am I am allowed to copy and publish on Booktalk an article taken from the Times Online if they don't stipulate it's forbidden?
Perhaps what I lack in towering enthusiam may be compensated by wealth of gathered information. I'll add it now, I don't necessarily expect you to read it all , but this is just to show that I've done my homework...
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Title A Thousand Splendid Suns Author Khaled Hosseini Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
About the book
In brief
Mariam is an harami, an illegitimate child who only sees her adored father once a week. On those precious days they go fishing, he reads to her and gives her beautiful presents, but she can never live with him. When she decides to visit his home, a visit he does not acknowledge, she returns to find that her mother has hanged herself. Determined that she will not secure a place in their household, her father's wives marry her off to Rasheed, an elderly widower from Kabul, far enough away for Mariam to be safely forgotten. Theirs is a marriage that soon deteriorates into brutality and misery made worse for Mariam by the arrival of the orphaned Laila and Rasheed's decision to marry her. When Laila disappoints Rasheed by bearing a daughter, she too finds herself the target of his cruelty. Out of this unhappy household grows a friendship which will bind the two women in a union as close as any marriage, and which will endure beyond death. Written in often lyrical prose, Khaled Hosseini's second novel weaves thirty years of turbulent Afghan history through an intensely powerful story of family, friendship and, ultimately, hope.
In detail
Khaled Hosseini's reputation as an accomplished storyteller has already been well and truly established with The Kite Runner, his celebrated debut novel written in the early hours before setting off for his 'day job' as a doctor. Brought up in a tradition of storytelling, Hosseini has described this tradition as first and foremost what writing novels is about. It is a quality central to A Thousand Splendid Suns which seamlessly blends the compelling narratives of Mariam and Laila with the deeply troubled history of Afghanistan over the past thirty years. Hosseini has described writing the novel as 'an even more satisfying experience for me than the writing of The Kite Runner, because it was a more complex and ultimately unexpected journey.'
With his first novel Hosseini had wanted to give a Western public assailed with media images of war-torn Afghanistan, firstly during the Soviet occupation and then under the Taliban, a glimpse of the country he remembered from childhood and to dispel some of the misconceptions that some of his adopted countrymen had about it. Many of those misconceptions were about women who had not suffered repression before the Taliban seized power contrary to popular Western belief. During what many have called the 'Golden Years' of the '60s and '70s, women actively contributed to Afghan society
I would have liked to wait until I had participated in at least one discussion before offering to lead one, and I would have preferred to start with one I feel enthusiastic about rather than one I just think is OK.
On the plus side, I've got more time on my hands at the moment than I would normally have, so this has also influenced my decision to volunteer.
Once you have thought about my offer, is there anybody who could volunteer to answer questions I could have later about organizing the discussion?
And for now, am I am allowed to copy and publish on Booktalk an article taken from the Times Online if they don't stipulate it's forbidden?
Perhaps what I lack in towering enthusiam may be compensated by wealth of gathered information. I'll add it now, I don't necessarily expect you to read it all , but this is just to show that I've done my homework...
------------------------------------------------------
Title A Thousand Splendid Suns Author Khaled Hosseini Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
About the book
In brief
Mariam is an harami, an illegitimate child who only sees her adored father once a week. On those precious days they go fishing, he reads to her and gives her beautiful presents, but she can never live with him. When she decides to visit his home, a visit he does not acknowledge, she returns to find that her mother has hanged herself. Determined that she will not secure a place in their household, her father's wives marry her off to Rasheed, an elderly widower from Kabul, far enough away for Mariam to be safely forgotten. Theirs is a marriage that soon deteriorates into brutality and misery made worse for Mariam by the arrival of the orphaned Laila and Rasheed's decision to marry her. When Laila disappoints Rasheed by bearing a daughter, she too finds herself the target of his cruelty. Out of this unhappy household grows a friendship which will bind the two women in a union as close as any marriage, and which will endure beyond death. Written in often lyrical prose, Khaled Hosseini's second novel weaves thirty years of turbulent Afghan history through an intensely powerful story of family, friendship and, ultimately, hope.
In detail
Khaled Hosseini's reputation as an accomplished storyteller has already been well and truly established with The Kite Runner, his celebrated debut novel written in the early hours before setting off for his 'day job' as a doctor. Brought up in a tradition of storytelling, Hosseini has described this tradition as first and foremost what writing novels is about. It is a quality central to A Thousand Splendid Suns which seamlessly blends the compelling narratives of Mariam and Laila with the deeply troubled history of Afghanistan over the past thirty years. Hosseini has described writing the novel as 'an even more satisfying experience for me than the writing of The Kite Runner, because it was a more complex and ultimately unexpected journey.'
With his first novel Hosseini had wanted to give a Western public assailed with media images of war-torn Afghanistan, firstly during the Soviet occupation and then under the Taliban, a glimpse of the country he remembered from childhood and to dispel some of the misconceptions that some of his adopted countrymen had about it. Many of those misconceptions were about women who had not suffered repression before the Taliban seized power contrary to popular Western belief. During what many have called the 'Golden Years' of the '60s and '70s, women actively contributed to Afghan society
Ophelia.
