Khaled Hosseini’s first book The Kite Runner was a very interesting book - certainly worth reading. There were some difficult parts that dealt with extremely harsh realities.  There are parts of the plot that will literally make a reader wince. Considering Afghanistan’s recent history with the Taliban, al-Qaeda, etc., a book with Afghani characters should do that.

However, there were also a few parts of the story that to me felt contrived. With that caveat, I would still suggest it to people.

The author’s second bestselling novel A Thousand Splendid Suns is excellent. I don’t really have any complaints about the story at all. There wasn’t a point in the book where I became distracted and thought to myself that the author had planned too much in advance. Instead I could allow myself to get completely submerged and interested in the characters and plot as the story unfolded.

Hossein is a writer with the soul of a poet. There are some sentences in this book that portray things so beautifully. There are points where the wording makes the reader pause a little to ponder how well the author’s imagery conveys the characters’ experiences and thoughts.

I’m being careful not to give hardly anything away, so that you can discover it for yourself. I’ll give this book one of my best possible ratings. That is, I’m going to get on the phone and tell my mother to read it.