A Thousand Splendid Suns revolves around two protagonists-Mariam and Laila and how their fate intertwined through the events of the novel. Mariam is the daughter of a wealthy merchant Jalil and was born out of wedlock. She lives with her mother in Herat, a small city in Afghanistan where her father used to visit once a week. After her mother passed away, she is forcibly married to a widowed shoemaker Rasheed in Kabul who is considerably older than her.