Books like Khaled Hosseini Box Set [Includes The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns]

Amir, the son of a wealthy businessman, lives in Kabul with his father, whom he calls Baba. Amir is of the opinion that Baba does not believe he has the makings of a man. His close friend from childhood, Hassan, son of Baba’s servant Ali, is the apple of Baba’s eye. They belong to a lower caste, and Amir’s friendship with Hassan is often condemned by a local violent sociopath, Assef. Hassan is known to be an efficient kite runner, who can determine where a kite is going to land without looking at it. In a local kite-flying competition, Amir triumphs and finally wins the praise of his dad, but at the cost of a selfish act of betrayal towards Hassan when he is bullied by Assef. This event changes the direction of their lives, shatters their futures, and the traumatic incident haunts Amir for years.The book follows the story of how Amir tries to annul his guilt. The story is set in the backdrop of events like the fall of Afghanistan’s monarch to the Soviet forces, the exodus of Afghan refugees to Pakistan and the U.S., and the rise of the Taliban.It was first published in 2003. It received the Boeke Prize in South Africa in 2004, and was also voted the Reading Group Book of the Year in 2006 and 2007.The second book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is Hosseini’s second novel after The Kite Runner. It focuses on the troubles of two Afghan women whose lives entwine and change for the better.Mariam is born out of an illegal affair between her father Jalil, a wealthy businessman, and her mother Nana who worked as Jalil’s servant before they had an illicit affair. When she visits her father on her fifteenth birthday, he refuses to meet her, and as she returns home dejected, she discovers her mother has committed suicide by hanging herself thinking that Mariam had deserted her. This leads to Jalil being forced to take custody of Mariam, and he marries her off to Rasheed, a shoemaker in Kabul who is thirty years her senior. They try to conceive children but are never successful, and Rasheed takes to being abusive.About twenty years later, Laila, who was born in the same neighbourhood, is separated from her lover Tariq because the latter’s family was moving out owing to the continuous bombings in Kabul. As Laila’s family also decides to move, a rocket strikes their house, leaving her parents dead and her seriously injured. She is taken in by Rasheed and Mariam, where she discovers that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child. When she is told that Tariq is dead, she agrees to marry Rasheed, who wants to have a younger and more attractive wife. Laila gives birth to a girl, who is named Aziza, and this leaves Rasheed furious. He takes to beating her up badly, and that is when Mariam supports Laila and they become the best of friends.How they try to get rid of Rasheed and how their relationship takes turns from being as close as that of two best friends, to something as deep as that of a mother and daughter forms the rest of the story. The story is set in the times of the rise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, when life was almost always amongst a lot of gunfire and bombs.The book was published in 2007. The book spent many weeks on The New York Times bestseller List for both paperback and hardback fiction.