Hosseini was born in Kabul, the son of a diplomat and high-school teacher. At the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when Hosseini was 11, his father was working in the Afghan embassy in Paris. The family requested and received political asylum in the United States, where Hosseini later went to medical school and became a physician.
Book review by Me:
The events of the story play between 1964 and 2003 in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Miriam was mourning for the death of her mother who hanged herself after Miriam went to live with her father. Her father who visit her only once a week and who he’s never could live with. Miriam liked the stories that her father always tells and the presents he brings with him.
She wished to be with him every day and every second like all her half-sister and brothers do and to live altogether like all ordinary family’s do.
One day without telling anybody she went to visit her father who lived in big house with his two wife’s and children.
Miriam suspected to be welcomed by her father and to be given a room in his beautiful house. She has dreamed about this day for many years. Only that day she spent the night sitting outside her father’s house waiting until he will come and take her inside.
The next morning her father finally comes out but he told her to go back home with his driver. Miriam was broken-hearted by these words all the things that her mother had told her about him were sadly true.
Back home she saw her mother hanged on a tree, like she said she will do if Miriam will leave her and go to live with her father.
Against her will Miriam went back to her father. She was given a room and clothes like she always had dreamed but it seemed not beautiful anymore.
Few days later her father told her that she will get married to a man who called Rasheed. Rasheed who she never had seen before and the shock was that he was old enough to be her grandfather.
The image of her father was now completely ruined. Miriam wished that she had listened to her mother and stayed away from him and his wife’s’. Now she was sent far enough to be forgotten forever.
It was hard for Miriam who was only fifteen to go and live with a totally stranger in a strange city far away from home, but after her mom he hasn’t a home anymore she thought.
Miriam had to wear a burqa and to hide in her room when visitors come to see Rasheed.
The live seemed to smile to her again when she got pregnant, but not for long because after three months Miriam had a miscarriage. With that the baby and her dream of a good life with Rasheed was gone.
Her life gets more badly when Rasheed decided to marry Leila a young beauty. When Leila give him a girl her life with Rasheed seemed even worse as Miriam’s’.
Despite of this unhappy household grow an unbelievable friendship between Miriam and Leila. Miriam found in Leila and her children the love and family she never had. She liked to give Leila a live she dreamed of a live with love.
One day Rasheed was beaten Leila again. Miriam looked in his eyes who were wide and crazy. She tried to stop him with her words after that with her body but he was to strong. Miriam knows that he was going the kill them if he could and she knows he could. He could kill them and no one will ask him why. If she doesn’t kill him now he will kill them both she knows.
Miriam ran to the tool shed and took a shovel and went back to slap Rasheed with it. Leila was shocked when Rasheed felt down on the floor. Miriam looked even shocked, she has killed him with her own hands. Rasheed the nightmare in there live was gone, finally!
Miriam and Leila brought Rasheed to the tool shed and go back home. Miriam told Leila to go with her children and her lover Tariq to live far away. Miriam would stay because she knows that if they go together Taliban will found them and kill them surely.
Leila went to married Tariq and live liked she always wished to live but Miriam was still in her mind. After a while Leila went back home to see what’s happened with Miriam and she heard she was dead. Miriam had given her life so Leila could live.
