All day, this poem about Kabul has been bouncing around in my head. Saib-e-Tabrizi wrote it back in the seventeenth century, I think. I used to know the whole poem, but all I can remember now is two lines: "One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls." Khaled Hosseini's first bestseller, The Kite Runner , hit the American and European lists in 2003 and was adapted into an award-winning film in 2007. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns , continues his quest to write about the life of Afghan people. While his first novel focused on the warring country from the point of view of two young boys, the second adopts a more challenging approach through two women living in Kabul. Hosseini himself explains, "I suppose there were some easier roads I could have gone down, but I chose this one because, both as a writer and an Afghan, I couldn't think of a more riveting or important or compelling