A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
Characters
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Miriam She is the main character of the story. She was born illegitimately to a wealthy man of Herat and one of
his housekeepers. She tries to force her father to acknowledge her as his daughter, but it leads to the heartache of
her mother’s suicide and her own arranged marriage to Rasheed. She lives with him many years as an abused wife
until Laila becomes his second wife. They establish a fast friendship and Mariam eventually kills Rasheed as he is
choking Laila to death. She is executed by the Taliban for her crime.
Laila She is a beautiful young girl with golden hair who is raised by a modern set of parents to be an educated
woman in an Islamic world. Because her parents are killed by a Mujahideen rocket, and she is six weeks pregnant
to Tariq whom she believes is dead, she married Rasheed. Like Mariam, she becomes part of a home where she is
abused and where she carries on a lie that her daughter is Rasheed’s. Eventually, after Tariq surfaces and Rasheed
finds out that she allowed him in their home, she is nearly choked to death by her husband. Only Mariam’s
intervention saves her life. She is then forced to leave Afghanistan with her children in order to protect her son
and daughter. Mariam accepts her fate and is left behind.
Tariq He is the neighbor boy that Laila has always loved. He lost his leg when he stepped on a land mine quite
early in his life, but is one of the toughest kids in his neighborhood. He always protected her from anyone who
bullies her. He leaves Afghanistan with his parents when it becomes impossible to stay in a crumbling society. He
promise to find Laila when he can. He ends up in a refugee camp where his father dies. He is determined to get his
mother out of the camp and accepts a job delivering a leather coat to another city. Unfortunately, the coat is lined
with hashish and he is caught by Pakistani police. He is sentenced to seven years in prison, which is really a
generous sentence for the times and then is released. His mother has died in the interim and so he heads home to
Kabul. There he finds Laila, and with his presence, sets up the death of Rasheed. He later escapes from Kabul with
Laila and returns to Murree, Pakistan, to wed her and come to know his real daughter, Aziza. In the end, he agrees
to go back to Kabul when the Taliban is driven out to help rebuild the city they love.
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Rasheed He is villain of the story, a cruel, abusive man who was dead drunk when his only son fell
into a lake and drowned. He had already lost his wife in childbirth and has become more than
bitter. He is almost psychotic. He beats and verbally abuses both his wives whom he married to
create a son to replace the one he lost. Later, his abusive behavior leads to his murder, when one
wife kills him to save the other.
Jalil Khan He is Mariam’s father who made the mistake of an affair with one his housecleaners to
produce her. He is a loving father who visits her once a week at the hut in the village of Gul Daman
where he has sent her and her mother to live. She is really an object of shame for him, but his love
for her will not allow him to completely dismiss her. However, when she forces him to recognize
her, he marries her off to Rasheed, a decision he comes later to regret very much. He comes to see
her in Kabul to tell her that he is dying, but she refuses to see him. So, within days of his death, he
leaves her oval box filled with a videotape, a letter of apology, and a huge amount of money from
what he had left in material possessions. He sends it to Mullah Faizullah for safekeeping, just in
case Mariam returns to find her father. However, he dies without ever hearing the knock at the
door that would be Mariam.
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Aziza Daughter of Tariq and Laila but said to be daughter of Rasheed. Sent to an orphanage by
Rasheed when food and money are scarce.
Zalmai He is the son of Rasheed and Laila and looks and acts like his father, even though he is just
a small child
Mammy and Babi They are Laila’s parents
Mullah Faizullah He is the tutor Mariam knew and loved. He came to the kolba to teach her the
Koranic verses and prayers, but comes to admire her and believe she is a wonderful little girl who
should be acknowledged by her father. He is devastated when her father marries her to Rasheed,
but willingly saves the box that Jalil Khan leaves behind to save for the daughter he allowed to get
away. He dies with the wish that his son guard the box for Mariam who will never see it.
Abdul Sharif He is a doorman at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul who is paid by Rasheed to
pretend he had been in the hospital room where Tariq was brought and died. His story to Laila is
filled with tenderness, sorrow, and supposedly Tariq’s last words. However, even though Laila
readily believes it, it is all a lie, and only when Mariam recognizes him when she goes to the hotel
to telephone her father, does the Laila learn that this is how Rasheed tricked her into marrying him.
Summary
• The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban
tyranny seen from the perspectives of two women. Mariam is the scorned
illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age fifteen into
marrying Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal when she fails to
produce a child. Eighteen years later, Rasheed takes another wife,
fourteen year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options,
after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation.
Mariam and Laila become allies in a battle with Rasheed, whose violent
abuse is endorsed by custom and law. The author gives a forceful portrait
of despotism where women are dependent on fathers, husbands and
especially sons, the bearing of male children being their only path to an
accepted social status. Each woman in the end is forced to accept a path
that will never be completely happy for them: Mariam will have to
sacrifice her life to save Laila after she murders their husband while Laila,
even though marrying her childhood love, must find a way to keep the
sacrifice Mariam has made from not becoming an act done in vain.
Conflict
• Man vs. Society