Historical fiction · Similar reads
Books like A Thousand Splendid Suns
The best books like A Thousand Splendid Suns are The Kite Runner, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, and I Am Malala. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is about women's suffering and resilience, war and civilian life, friendship and female solidarity. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- The Kite Runner
01
Khaled Hosseini · Literary fiction
The Kite Runner opens in Kabul in the early 1970s and follows Amir, the son of a wealthy Pashtun merchant, and Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
02
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Marjane Satrapi · Memoir
Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir of growing up in Tehran during and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - I Am Malala
03
Malala Yousafzai · Memoir
I Am Malala is the memoir of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who was shot by the Taliban on her school bus in October 2012 at age fifteen, and who survived to become the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
04
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Azar Nafisi · Memoir
Azar Nafisi spent years teaching literature at universities in Tehran before the restrictions on what she could teach — and who she could teach — became intolerable.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Half of a Yellow Sun
05
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Historical fiction
Half of a Yellow Sun is set before and during the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 to 1970, a conflict in which more than a million people died, most of them Igbo civilians from the secessionist Republic of Biafra.
Both dig into war and civilian life.
Read the summary → - A Gentleman in Moscow
06
Amor Towles · Historical fiction
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal — not to death, but to permanent house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Tale of Two Cities
07
Charles Dickens · Historical fiction
A Tale of Two Cities is set against the French Revolution and follows three intertwined characters: Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who has renounced his title and family legacy; Lucie Manette, the daughter of a man who spent eighteen years imprisoned in the Bastille; and Sydney Carton, a dissolute English lawyer who loves Lucie without hope and knows he will never be the man Darnay already is.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Alias Grace
08
Margaret Atwood · Historical fiction
Alias Grace is based on the historical case of Grace Marks, a young Irish immigrant servant who was convicted in 1843, along with stable hand James McDermott, of the murders of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Upper Canada.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - All the Light We Cannot See
09
Anthony Doerr · Historical fiction
All the Light We Cannot See follows two children through the Second World War on a collision course neither can see coming.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Babel
10
R.F. Kuang · Historical fiction
Set in an alternate 1830s Oxford, Babel imagines a Royal Institute of Translation at the heart of the British Empire — a place where silver bars engraved with translation "match-words" generate the industrial magic that powers British supremacy.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Bring Up the Bodies
11
Hilary Mantel · Historical fiction
Bring Up the Bodies is the second novel in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, picking up where Wolf Hall ended: Anne Boleyn is Queen, Henry VIII is restless, and Thomas Cromwell is the indispensable minister who keeps the machinery of the court running.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Homegoing
12
Yaa Gyasi · Historical fiction
Homegoing begins in eighteenth-century Ghana with two half-sisters who never meet.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like A Thousand Splendid Suns: quick answers
What are the best books like A Thousand Splendid Suns?
The best books like A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini are The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi, I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with A Thousand Splendid Suns, such as women's suffering and resilience, war and civilian life, friendship and female solidarity.
What should I read after A Thousand Splendid Suns?
A natural next read after A Thousand Splendid Suns is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. A kindred historical fiction read. Other strong choices are Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi, I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi.
What books are similar to A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini?
A Thousand Splendid Suns centers on women's suffering and resilience, war and civilian life, friendship and female solidarity. Books with a similar feel include The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi, I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
