A Thousand Splendid Suns
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free A Thousand Splendid Suns trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns follows two Afghan women born a generation apart, Mariam and Laila, whose lives are forced together under one roof in Kabul. Across three decades of coups, invasion, civil war and Taliban rule, their rivalry turns into the fiercest loyalty in the book. The novel has sold in the millions and remains a favourite of classrooms and book clubs. This quiz covers the whole story: who the characters are to one another, the turns of the plot from Mariam's childhood to the final chapter, the sayings and scenes readers quote most, and the real Afghan history in the background. A few questions step outside the novel to its author, its title and its adaptations. It is written for students revising for a reading test, book clubs looking for a discussion starter, and anyone who has just turned the last page. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can check a detail or settle an argument as you go.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what does Mariam use to kill Rasheed as he strangles Laila?
A shovel
A shovel ends Rasheed's life after decades of beatings. Mariam swings it twice, and sees the blow as the first real choice she has ever made for herself.
Q 02Which Disney film does Mariam's father break his promise to show her in A Thousand Splendid Suns?
Pinocchio
Pinocchio is the cartoon he never takes her to; she walks to his house instead and sleeps outside his gate. Decades later a videotape of it turns up in the box he left for her.
Q 03In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what is the trade of Rasheed, the Kabul widower Mariam is made to marry at fifteen?
A shoemaker
A shoemaker with his own shop, Rasheed is about thirty years older than his bride. He has already lost a first wife and a young son.
Q 04Khaled Hosseini published A Thousand Splendid Suns as the follow-up to which bestselling debut novel?
The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner came out in 2003 and spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Its main characters were almost all men, which pushed Hosseini to write about Afghan women next.
Q 05In A Thousand Splendid Suns, which Hollywood film becomes a craze in Taliban-ruled Kabul through smuggled copies?
Titanic
Titanic fever grips the drought-stricken city, and all kinds of goods on sale are soon named after the film. Laila thinks everyone simply wants to be rescued.
Q 06In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what does Laila undergo without anaesthetic in a Taliban-era women's hospital in Kabul?
A caesarean
A caesarean is the only way to deliver her breech child, and the hospital has no anaesthetic, clean water or electricity. Laila tells the surgeon to go ahead anyway.
Q 07In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam grows up in a hut outside which western Afghan city, home to her father?
Herat
Herat is where Hosseini's own parents came from. Mariam leaves it on a bus as a bride and never returns; Laila makes the journey for her at the novel's end.
Q 08In A Thousand Splendid Suns, where does Rasheed make Laila send her daughter when the family is close to starving?
An orphanage
An orphanage in Kabul takes the girl in, and its kindly director secretly teaches the children behind drawn curtains. Laila and Tariq later help him rebuild it.
Q 09In A Thousand Splendid Suns, which historic site does Laila's father take her and Tariq to see on a day trip?
The Bamiyan Buddhas
The Bamiyan Buddhas tower over the valley as he tells the children to see their country's heritage for themselves. Years later Laila hears that the Taliban have blown the statues up.
Q 10Before bestsellers such as A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini spent over ten years working as what?
A doctor
A doctor until his debut's success let him retire, Hosseini likened practising medicine to an arranged marriage. His father was a diplomat and his mother taught Persian.
Q 11In A Thousand Splendid Suns, which word for an illegitimate child is five-year-old Mariam called by her own mother?
Harami
Harami is the slur she hears after breaking a piece of her mother's tea set. She is too young to know what it means, and it shadows her for the rest of her life.
Q 12In A Thousand Splendid Suns, which wealthy businessman with three wives is Mariam's father and weekly visitor?
Jalil
Jalil owns a cinema and is one of the richest men in his city, yet keeps Mariam hidden away to spare his legitimate family. His letter of regret is opened only after she is dead.
Q 13In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what does Rasheed order Mariam to wear outdoors in her first weeks as his wife?
A burqa
Q 21In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what is the Dari word for the small hut where Mariam spends her first fifteen years?
Kolba
Kolba is the name for the shack her father and his sons built in a clearing outside town, out of sight of his household. Laila finds it run-down and empty at the end.
Q 22In A Thousand Splendid Suns, which character warns young Mariam that a man will always find a woman to blame?
Nana
Nana, her bitter mother, speaks from experience: once his housekeeper, she was cast out when Mariam's father told his wives that she had forced herself on him.
Q 23In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what one skill does Mariam's mother tell her a woman has to learn?
Endurance
Endurance, in Dari tahamul, is her answer when Mariam asks to go to school; she says lessons would be wasted on a girl like her. Mariam never does see the inside of a classroom.
A burqa is what he hands her soon after the wedding, insisting a wife's face is for her husband alone. Taliban law would not demand one for more than twenty years.
Q 14In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what does Rasheed force Mariam to chew to show his contempt for her cooking?
Pebbles
Pebbles are pushed into her mouth, and biting down breaks two of her teeth. The scene comes four years and seven miscarriages into the marriage.
Q 15In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what cost Laila's childhood friend and first love Tariq one of his legs?
A land mine
A land mine took the leg before he was even a teenager. At the end of the novel Tariq works for a charity that fits other victims with artificial limbs.
Q 16In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what secret makes the orphaned Laila agree so quickly to marry Rasheed?
She is pregnant
She is pregnant by Tariq, whom she believes dead, so a fast wedding lets Rasheed think the child is his. The stranger who reported the death had been paid to lie.
Q 17In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what name meaning the cherished one does Laila give her firstborn daughter?
Aziza
Aziza is the child who melts Mariam's coldness, and caring for her turns the two wives from rivals into allies. Rasheed, who wanted a boy, shows the girl no affection.
Q 18Khaled Hosseini calls his debut a tale of father and son; how does he describe A Thousand Splendid Suns?
A mother-daughter story
A mother-daughter story is his own phrase for it, since the bond between the two wives grows into that of parent and child. His third novel turned to brothers and sisters.
Q 19In A Thousand Splendid Suns, in which Pakistani hill town do Laila and Tariq marry after fleeing Kabul?
Murree
Murree is where Tariq had found work at a small hotel after leaving prison. They marry the day they arrive, and the hotel's owner pays for the rings.
Q 20In A Thousand Splendid Suns, which world event do Laila and Tariq watch unfold in a Pakistani hotel lobby?
The September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks reach them on screen two days after news that the commander who fought the Taliban has been killed. Within weeks American bombs are falling on Kabul.
Q 24In A Thousand Splendid Suns, on which day each week does Mariam's father come to fish and draw with her?
Thursday
Thursday is the day she waits for all week, when he brings gifts and newspaper clippings. The day he fails to collect her for the cinema, on her fifteenth birthday, changes her life.
Q 25In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what kills both of Laila's parents as the family packs to flee Kabul?
A rocket
A rocket hits the house only days after her mother finally agreed to leave. Laila, standing outside, is pulled from the rubble by Rasheed and nursed by Mariam.
Q 26In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what does Mariam's mother say enters her body when she suffers her seizures?
A jinn
A jinn is her name for the fits, and one of them cost her a husband: her wedding to a parakeet seller was called off, and no other suitor ever came.
Q 27In A Thousand Splendid Suns, which spoiled son of Rasheed and Laila innocently reveals that Tariq has visited?
Zalmai
Zalmai adores his father and tells him after dinner about his mother's visitor, which triggers the final beating. In exile he slowly learns to accept Tariq.
Q 28In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what banned luxury does Rasheed buy for his son, which the wives bury in the yard?
A television
A television and a video player, bought on borrowed money from an underground market, are his proudest gift to the boy. Mariam and Laila dig a hole in the backyard to keep the set from the Taliban.
Q 29In A Thousand Splendid Suns, what destroys Rasheed's shop during the drought and leaves the family going hungry?
A fire
A fire burns the shop down in the summer of 2000, the worst year of the drought. Rasheed is sacked from two restaurant jobs afterwards, and the children start missing meals.
Q 30In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Laila's family is Tajik; to which ethnic group does her neighbour Tariq belong?
Pashtun
Pashtun is the group that has ruled Afghanistan for most of its history, as Laila's father explains to her. He believes in unity and thinks such labels should not divide Afghans.