Stage adaptation of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini set for Nottingham Playhouse

The story of two unlikely allies in the face of brutality and fear is to be told on stage.

On May 13, a stage adaptation of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini arrives at Nottingham Playhouse.

In 1992, in an Afghanistan ravaged by war, an orphaned Laila is left alone in an increasingly threatening world.

Her older neighbour Rasheed is quick to open his home and takes Laila as his second wife — and his first wife Mariam has no choice but to accept her younger, and now pregnant, rival.

As the Taliban take over, life for all of them becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, and the two women find themselves forming a close bond.

Rina Fatania stars as Mariam, alongside Kerena Jagpal as Laila, in the female-centric drama.

Adapted for the stage by Ursula Rani Sarma and directed by former Birmingham Rep artistic director and Hampstead Theatre artistic director Roxana Silbert, the show opened at Birmingham Rep and toured to Leeds Playhouse prior to it’s Nottingham dates.

The ‘unflinching, life affirming drama’, which showcases how love grows and sustains the human spirit even during the hardest of times, will run at the venue until May 24.