Photo: Marko Metzinger/Studio D
2 of 9
And the Mountains Echoed
By Khaled Hosseini
416 pages;
Riverhead Hardcover
And the Mountains Echoed (Riverhead) opens like a
thunderclap, with a fable of sacrifice told by a destitute Afghan
villager to his son and daughter. What makes his sad tale even more
searing is that the children are unaware their father is about to sell
one of them. From this dramatic opening spins a constellation of
star-crossed characters: Parwana, a twin, suffers from both jealousy and
admiration of her more beautiful sister, Masooma—until the
day she seals their conjoined tragic fate. Nila, a wealthy sophisticate
from Kabul, torments her love-struck servant, Nabi, while her husband,
Suleiman, has a secret of his own. Idris, an expat medical doctor, finds
that good intentions aren't always enough to overcome terrible
circumstances. The moving third novel from Khaled Hosseini, author of
The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid
Suns, asks good, hard questions about the limits of love.
These interwoven stories are told from a variety of perspectives, with
focus and motive ever-changing, and chapters traveling forward and
backward in time and location: a poor village; a wealthy neighborhood in
Kabul; homes in Paris, San Francisco and Athens. But Afghanistan
itself remains the emotional heart, ravaged by war, invaders and
poverty, as well as pitiless winters. Despite often shattering
experiences, hope survives. As Nabi explains: "We are waiting,
all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to
happen to us." Love, Hosseini seems to say, is the great
leveler, cutting through language, class and identity. No one in this
gripping novel is immune to its impact.
— Diana Abu-Jaber