Khaled Hosseini · 2007 · exile

Khaled Hosseini's 2007 novel. Mariam, an illegitimate girl from the hills near Herat, is married off to a shoemaker in Kabul; years later the young Laila, orphaned by war, becomes his second wife. Through the Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban rule, the two women's lives entwine - a doomed escape toward Pakistan, a terrible sacrifice, and at last a road back to a rebuilt home.

1. 1
   Herat

   The western city near which Mariam grows up in a hillside hut, and from which, after her mother's death, she is sent away to be married to a stranger in the capital.

2. 2
   Kabul

   The city where Mariam and later Laila live as the wives of the brutal Rasheed, enduring Soviet war, warlord shelling and the Taliban, their bond deepening through the horror.

3. 3
   Murree

   The hill town across the border in Pakistan where Laila and Tariq find refuge, before she chooses to return to Kabul to help rebuild from the ruins.