I felt this was just a female version of the kite runner with pretty much the same concept: the story of unlikely yet great friendship and the sacrifices made for it... I was disappointed by it, not necessarily because it was so bad, but perhaps because the kite runner was so much better, in my opinion, that it overshadowed (pun not intended) A thousand splendid suns. In contrast, the characters in this book lacked the depth and complexity that those in the kite runner displayed. A thousand splendid suns seemed pretty much a cliche of how the feminist west views the east through the goggles of the media as well as other literature such as 'Afghanistan, where God only comes to weep', 'Bookseller of Kabul', etc. It just gets redundant after a while.