The Middle Stage on Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. “The fictions of Khaled Hosseini portray not just a world out of joint – an Afghanistan racked first by conflict with the Soviets and then a civil war – but also, within it, families where unnatural formations are prevalent and guilty secrets harboured. This surfeit of disorder results in extravagant narratives that are always ticking away like timebombs. Disaster is never more than an arm's length away in Hosseini's work, as guns and bombs on the streets, and an insensitive and authoritarian patriarchal culture inside the home, create an atmosphere “of abasement, of degradation and despair”.”