英文读书报告参考范文 book report

2021年1月25日发(作者：viceversa)
A Book Report of a Thousand Splendid Suns
A Book Report of a Thousand Splendid Suns

Wenjing Shi

Translation 152

1507042034

Brief Introduction
A
Thousand
Splendid
Suns
is
a
2007
novel
by
Afghan-American
author
Khaled
Hosseini
.
It
is
his
second,
following
his
bestselling
2003
debut,
The
Kite
Runner
.
Mariam is an illegitimate child, and suffers from both the stigma surrounding her birth
along with the abuse she faces throughout her marriage. Laila, born a generation later,
is comparatively privileged during her youth until their lives intersect and she is also
forced to accept a marriage proposal from Rasheed, Mariam's husband.
The author Hosseini has remarked that he regards the novel as a
story
The Kite Runner
, which he considers a
continues some of the themes used in his previous work, such as the familial aspects,
but focuses primarily on female characters and their roles in Afghan society.

The Author
＆

Background
Khaled
Hosseini ( born
March
4,
1965)
is
an
Afghan-born
American
novelist
and
physician
. After
graduating
from
college,
he
worked
as
a
doctor in California, an occupation that he likened to
published three novels, most notably his 2003 debut
The Kite Runner
, all of which are
at
least
partially
set
in
Afghanistan
and
feature
an
Afghan
as
the
protagonist.
Following the success of
The Kite Runner
he retired from medicine to write full- time.
Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father worked as a diplomat, and when
Hosseini was 11 years old, the family moved to France; four years later, they applied
for
asylum
in
the
United
States,
where
he
later
became
a
citizen.
Hosseini
did
not

1
A Book Report of a Thousand Splendid Suns
return
to
Afghanistan
until
2001
at
the
age
of
36,
where
he

like
a
tourist
in
hisown country
Hosseini
visited
Afghanistan
in
2003,
and

so
many
stories
about
what
happened
to
women,
the
tragedies
that
they
had
endured,
the
difficulties,
the
gender-based
violence
that
they
had
suffered,
the
discrimination,
the
being
barred
from active life during the Taliban, having their movement restricted, being banned
essentially
from
practicing
their
legal,
social
rights,
political
rights
motivated
him to write a novel centered on two Afghan women.

Title

The title of the book comes from a line in the Josephine Davis translation of the poem

Saib Tabrizi
:

Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye

Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs

And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

In an interview, Khaled Hosseini explains,
poems about Kabul, for use in a scene where a character bemoans leaving his beloved
city, when I found this particular verse. I realized that I had found not only the right
line for the scene, but also an evocative title in the phrase 'a thousand splendid suns,'
which appears in the next-to-last stanza.

Summary
The novel centers around two women, Mariam and Laila, how their lives become
intertwined after a series of drastic events, and their subsequent friendship and
support for each other in the backdrop of Kabul in the 20th and 21st century. It is split

2
A Book Report of a Thousand Splendid Suns
into four parts that focus on individual stories: Part one is about Mariam, part two is
on Laila, part three is on the relationship between the two women, and Laila's life
with Tariq is in part four. The last section also happens to be the only part written in
the present tense.
Mariam lives in a
kolba
on the outskirts of
Herat
with her embittered mother. Jalil, her
father, is a wealthy businessman who owns a cinema and lives in the town with three
wives and nine children. Mariam is his illegitimate daughter,and she is prohibited to
live with them, but Jalil visits her every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam
wants her father to take her to see
Pinocchio
at his movie theater, against the pleas of
her mother. When he does not show up, she hikes into town and goes to his house. He
refuses to see her, and she ends up sleeping on the street. In the morning, Mariam
returns home to find that her mother has committed suicide out of fear that her
daughter had deserted her. Mariam is then taken to live in her father's house. Jalil
arranges for her to be married to Rasheed, a shoemaker from
Kabul
who is
thirty-years her senior. In Kabul, Mariam becomes pregnant seven successive times,
but is never able to carry a child to term. This is a sad, disquieting reality for both
Rasheed and Mariam. Ultimately Rasheed grows more and more despondent over his
wife's inability to have a child and particularly a son. As their marriage wears on
Rasheed gradually becomes more and more abusive.
Part Two introduces Laila. She is a girl growing up in Kabul who is close friends with
Tariq, a boy living in her neighborhood. They eventually develop a romantic
relationship despite being aware of the social boundaries between men and women in
Afghan society. War comes to Afghanistan, and Kabul is bombarded by rocket attacks.
Tariq's family decides to leave the city, and the emotional farewell between Laila and
Tariq culminates with them making love. Laila's family also decides to leave Kabul,
but as they are packing a rocket destroys the house, killing her parents and severely
injuring Laila. Laila is subsequently taken in by Rasheed and Mariam.

3