On the top tier of my all-time best books list from both a literary standpoint and an entertainment standpoint. If you have not read this book yet, you should! As I turned the last page, I felt like my best friends had just moved away. I was so entrenched in their lives I wanted to keep in touch with them. I thought about the story long after I filed the book on my bookshelves. This would be a fantastic book club read with so much to discuss and so much about your life to be grateful for.

Related Reading

• First They Killed My Father
• Mountains Beyond Mountains
• the books that changed my life

Frequently Asked Questions: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Do I need to read The Kite Runner first?

No. It stands entirely on its own — it shares an author and a country with The Kite Runner but not a story. Plenty of readers, myself included, rate this one higher. Start wherever you like.

Is A Thousand Splendid Suns hard to read?

It is emotionally hard rather than difficult. The novel follows two women through decades of war and domestic violence in Afghanistan, and it does not look away from either. What carries you through is the friendship at its centre, which is one of the most moving I have read. Go in expecting to be affected.

Is it a good book club pick?

A fantastic one. There is a great deal to discuss — the friendship, the choices the characters have and do not have, and how differently your own life looks by the last page. In my experience groups leave this discussion feeling grateful rather than merely impressed.

Why do you rate it so highly?

Because it succeeds on both counts at once. Plenty of books are literary and plenty are gripping; very few are both, and this is. I finished it feeling as though my best friends had moved away, and I was still thinking about the story long after the book was back on the shelf.