A thousand splendid suns

In his brilliant debut, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini mesmerized us with his evocative portraits and beautiful bittersweet story. Now he returns to tumultuous Afghanistan to tell the tale of an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love... The child of an illicit affair, Mariam was raised by her single mother on the outskirts of town. At 14, she was sent to Kabul and sold in marriage to Rasheed, a widower decades older than she. But now after twenty years and no offspring, Rasheed takes a beautiful teenager, Laila, as his second wife. While Mariam despises Laila and the baby born months after her arrival, Rasheed's cruelty and the explosive changes in the country soon draw the women together. --front flap