A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - 367 pages

Mariam lives in the countryside near Herat, Afghanistan, with her mother, in a mud hut.  Once a week her father visits, who is a wealthy man from Herat and not married to her mother.  Jalil, her father, has several wives and other children by these wives.  When Mariam is a teenager she decides to run away from her home with her mother and go to live with her father.  She is not welcomed and is returned to the country only to find her mother has committed suicide.  Jalil takes her in but his wives do not like this arrangement and find a man to marry her, Rasheed from Kabul.  The story continues about her life in Kabul with Rasheed and the hardships she endures.  The book is very interesting and gives us some insight into the society of Afghanistan during the Taliban dominance.