And the Mountains Echoed is Khaled Hosseini’s third novel. Published in 2013 by Riverhead Books, it comes from Hosseini's style in his first two works by his choice to avoid concentrating on any one character. Continuing the familial theme established in his previous two novels, And the Mountains Echoed focuses on the rapport between siblings. 

1.2 Research Significance

Plenty of critics have analyzed A Thousand Splendid Suns, an account of the complicated political and diplomatic history of Afghanistan, from the perspective of feminism and eco-feminism since its publication. Almost no one has a systematic study on the patriarchy of the female characters. Therefore, this paper will analyze the tragedies of the two female characters from the perspective of the conventional patriarchy in Afghan society and provides a new angle for the study of A Thousand Splendid Suns. This thesis falls into five parts. The first part is an introduction which will give a general introduction about the basic information of Khaled Hosseini and his main works as well as the research significance of this novel. The second part is literature review which briefly introduces the concept of patriarchy and the previous studies on this novel home and abroad. The third part sketches the main bitter experiences of two female characters: Mariam and Laila. The fourth part probes into the causes for the tragedies of the two female characters mainly from the perspective of patriarchy in Afghan society. The fifth part functions as a conclusion which aims to summarize the main findings, the implications and some deficiencies of this paper. 

2 Literature Review 

A Thousand Splendid Suns earns worldwide positive acclaim since its publication in 2007.  However, there is lack of systematic study on A Thousand Splendid Suns in that it is comparatively a new and unfamiliar literature work for many people. Therefore, the literature review of this thesis is grounded on some book reviews and research findings from international studies and domestic academic papers, and it gives a brief introduction of the concept of patriarchy as well.

2.1 The Research Status

Several studies have examined A Thousand Splendid Suns local home and abroad. Most of them concentrate on the literariness and cultural aspects of the novel, while some pay attention to its unique language style. For example, Yardley (2007:15) thinks the language is short of distinctiveness and grace, “The novel moves swiftly but is unwieldy, as Hosseini suddenly introduces an entirely new set of characters a quarter of the way through and needs another quarter of the way to get them fully involved in the plot”. While plenty of critics consider it as a successful work, for instance, Ghafour (2007:53) comments that “He was a wonderfully sparse style and a talent for rendering an alien culture familiar. As the country changes from the relatively liberal days of the 1960s to the backlash against modernity with the rise of the Taliban, he traces a disastrous shift in dynamics between men and women”. 文献综述

Considering that Khaled Hosseini as a new emerging writer and only three novels have been published, there is a limitation of systematic researches on him or his novels so far. Until 2016, there are fewer than 35 papers which can be searched in CNKI on A Thousand Splendid Suns. Sun Quanfang (2009) analyzes the novel from the point of Aesthetics of Reception, which focuses on the reader’s role and touch upon the text. Sun Quanfang (2009) applies Wolfgang Iser’s definition on The Implied reader, through the structure of response-inviting, to analyze how the text provoked and enforced the reading. Zhang Ling (2010), an English language and literature master from Heilongjiang University, applies the theory of New Historicism to the interpretation of the historical background, the themes and the characters of the novel. Jiang Yingying (2012) mainly analyzes A Thousand Splendid Suns from the perspective of eco-feminism to uncover the control and oppression on women and the devastation on nature in the patriarchal society. It attempts to testify the ecological and feminist consciousness in the novel and to show author’s rumination on the relationship among nature, men and women. Cao Ying (2014),  who is from Yunnan Normal University analyzes this novel with trauma theory, dedicating to deducing that the problems of family, marriage, war and gender discrimination cause severe psychological trauma of Afghan women. And Lu Longwei (2016) analyzes the novel in the theory of feminism. The author aims to interpret Mariam’s tragic fate from the perspective of feminism and explains how her father and husband oppress and maltreat Mariam, how her female consciousness is aroused by Laila and how she begins to resist.