Now Available: Updated Educator Guides for Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

By Spenser Stevens | September 7 2021 | General

Kabul-born novelist Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Sunsis known for his evocative storytelling deeply rooted in Afghanistan’s history and culture. Like so many of us, he watched Afghanistan fall to the Taliban with profound sadness. In the wake of these events, Penguin Random House has updated the educator’s guides for Hosseini’s novels.

 

When asked by the New York Times in a recent interview what people should be reading to better understand Afghanistan and the Afghan people right now, Hosseini responded:

“They should be reading history books. They should be reading people who really know Afghanistan and know it well. A lot of people have relied on my books to kind of get a view into what Afghanistan is, and that’s fine, but I have never intended for my books to be representative of what Afghan life is. I hope people dig much deeper than that and read history books and learn more about Afghanistan in that way.”

Penguin Random House has compiled a collection of Fiction and Non-fiction Titles to Better Understand America’s Involvement in Afghanistan.

 

The Kite Runner, spanning Afghan history from the final days of the monarchy to the present, tells the story of a friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Though raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant, is a Hazara. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade and Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

Download the educator’s guide for The Kite Runner here

 

 

 

A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the intertwined stories of the lives of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, both married to the same abusive man, during the years of the Soviet occupation, then the civil war and the Taliban dictatorship. This guide is designed to aid teachers in selecting resources that provide background to the novel. It also provides discussion questions and activities for before, during, and after reading the novel. Teachers can select the activities which best fit the needs of their students. This guide may also be useful to independent readers of the novel who are looking for resources to guide their reading.

Download the educator’s guide for A Thousand Splendid Suns here

 

 

 

 

 

 

9781594631931
The #1 New York Times bestselling novel beloved by millions of readers the world over.New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “A vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people [of Afghanistan] have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence—forces that continue to threaten them even today.”—The New York Times Book Review The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.   Since its publication in 2003 Kite Runner has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic of contemporary literature, touching millions of readers, and launching the career of one of America's most treasured writers.
$18.00 US
Mar 05, 2013
Paperback
400 Pages
Riverhead Books

9781594483851
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. “Just as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling first book, The Kite Runner.”—Newsweek New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.
$17.00 US
Nov 25, 2008
Paperback
432 Pages
Riverhead Books

9781594632389
An unforgettable novel about finding a lost piece of yourself in someone else.Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.
$18.00 US
Jun 03, 2014
Paperback
448 Pages
Riverhead Books

9780525539094
The #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed responds to the heartbreak of the current refugee crisis with this deeply moving, beautifully illustrated short work of fiction for people of all ages, all over the world.
$15.00 US
Sep 18, 2018
Hardcover
48 Pages
Riverhead Books

9781594485473
The perennial bestseller-now available as a sensational new graphic novel.
$24.00 US
Sep 06, 2011
Paperback
136 Pages
Riverhead Books