You may already know A Thousand Splendid Suns author Khaled Hosseini from his 2003 novel The Kite Runner. If not, allow us to jog your memory—it probably left you crying like a baby. Be warned. This one might jerk a few tears out of you, too.

Okay, okay—so our copy might be so waterlogged that we can't read it anymore, but what are you gonna do?

Like The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on Afghanistan, Hosseini's birthplace. Unlike The Kite Runner, however, this novel is focused on the lives of Afghan women. Hosseini returned to Afghanistan for the first time in almost thirty years just before writing this novel and was moved by the stories of the women he met there. Fragments of these real life stories made it right into the novel.

Do you remember Malala Yousafzai? She's the young Pakistani girl who was attacked by the Taliban for the unforgivable crime of going to school. Thankfully, her story has a happy ending, but many of her Middle East peers aren't as lucky. Times are tough for women in Afghanistan.

As you read A Thousand Splendid Suns, you'll come to know Laila and Mariam, two women who come from radically different walks of life. Laila enjoys a relatively stable home life, works hard at school, and spends her afternoons daydreaming about her lifelong crush. Mariam, on the other hand, is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman and faces a huge amount of social stigma from the day she is born.

And that's just the beginning. Hosseini was so moved by his experiences in Afghanistan and the writing of A Thousand Splendid Suns that he founded the Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help Afghans in need—especially Afghan women. Read this book to find out what it's all about; maybe it will inspire you, too.

Okay, so we figure there are two ways to go about this. We could tell you how A Thousand Splendid Suns is an intimate look at a country that has played a huge role in global politics over the last decade. We could tell you how America's continued presence in Afghanistan is proof that the country has a direct impact on you. We could tell you that learning more about the country's history can only be a good thing.

But that's only half of it.

True, A Thousand Splendid Suns is totally concerned with the political upheavals that have transformed Afghanistan over the past half-century. However, the novel is truly focused on the lives of individuals. And let us tell you, you already know these individuals very well.

That's because you've gone to high school and college with them. You know someone like Laila: smart, beautiful, and more than a little headstrong. You know someone like Tariq: physically challenged, sure, but tough as nails. And you know someone like Mariam: rejected by society, but capable of great things.

So, yeah, you'll learn a lot about the history of Afghanistan by reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. But you might just end up learning a little bit about yourself and your friends too.