AFGHANISTAN:Khaled Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, was the publishing sensation of post-9/11 Afghanistan, winning millions of readers for its tender portrayal of two men set against decades of conflict and harsh Taliban rule.
Four years later, the Afghan-American writer is venturing under the burka with A Thousand Splendid Suns, his keenly anticipated second novel that follows the trials and triumphs of two Afghan women over the same period.
"What do we really know about the woman behind the veil?" asks Hosseini, whose family fled Afghanistan for the US in 1976.
"What are their inner lives like? What are their thoughts? What are their hopes and dreams?"
His publisher clearly dreams of a second sales avalanche. In 2003 the author faced near empty bookshops during a promotional tour for The Kite Runner. However, rave word-of-mouth reviews travelled through book clubs and it climbed into the New York Timesbestseller list where it remained for two years.
Now eight million copies have been published and a film adaptation - filmed in western China because Afghanistan remains too dangerous - is due later this year.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, taken from a phrase in a 17th-century Persian poem, follows a similar narrative arc. It chronicles the lives of Laila and Mariam, two women flung together by forced marriage to the same man. Initially hostile, their friendship flourishes against the backdrop of four decades of tumultuous Afghan history.
The book received strong early reviews and entered amazon.com's top 20 list before publication.
Hosseini (42), the son of an exiled Afghan diplomat, got the idea for the book during a two-week trip to Kabul in 2003. "I began to understand the devastating effect that anarchy and oppression had on these women," he said.
"I heard about women who had been raped, attacked, humiliated and imprisoned. I heard about women who had seen their husbands blown up, their children starved to death, who had to make these incredibly difficult choices."