Ohhhh, I bought this book as something to read on the plane...even though it's hardcover and fairly cumbersome. I had an 8-10-ish hour long flight from Calgary to London, and I always like to have something to read (and knit). Anyways, I had really liked Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, so I was looking forward to reading this one. This book is more a tale of the lives of women in Afghanistan, against the backdrop of all that country's history. Whereas The Kite Runner was more a story of fathers and sons. Anyways, I really liked the book, it moved along quite quickly. It wasn't really a novel of twists and turns, but I could guess most of the major plot points. I liked how the two main protagonists, Mariam and Laila become friends in the most unthinkable of circumstances. The poem that this book takes its title from also sounds beautiful, this is just the one line that is referenced in the novel: "One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls" - Saib-e-Tabrizi