The Chatterbox Times

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

¨Time is the most unforgiving of fires,¨ one of the numerous lyrical phrases in a very lyrical novel by Khaled Hosseini. I have read and reread this book more times than I bother to count and I am still struck by its inspiring characters and Hosseini´s inventive, heartfelt style. Even though the main characters, Mariam and Laila, have circumstances and problems extraordinarily different from my own, I still find (day after day of reading) a connection with them.

My absolute favorite passage of A Thousand Spledid Suns (which I´ll brag that I memorized) is ¨In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could--a look, a whisper, a moan--to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires and she couldn´t, in the end, save it all...¨

A Thousand Splendid Suns is without cliches and it´s sincerely and thoughtfull written. At first glance, I didn´t have much interest in the book. After all, the story takes place in Afghanistan and I ¨didn´t read that sort of book.¨I can honestly write that A Thousand Splendid Suns is the best book I have ever read. My advice: you have to read it to believe it.