And the Mountains Echoed
Starting with a young boy and his beloved little sister in Afghanistan, separated abruptly and set on different paths. One is forever heartbroken, while the other has little memory of the past. Following, then, through the decades and stories of people around the world whose own pasts and choices set them on a course to influence the lives of the two children and others.
Khaled Hosseini weaves a complicated web composed of both strong and loose connections. Sometimes books such as these don't work--the reader has trouble following the connections, or individual stories are abandoned too soon. But Hosseini, as always, is masterful. While there were moments where I had to jog my memory about past characters, particularly when they appear only as glimpses in later stories, I never felt rushed through any one story. The characters are richly developed and the stories are given their space to unfold and reveal their place within the whole. I loved this book and will continue to read anything Hosseini writes.
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From the publisher’s description:
So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one…Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari – as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named – is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their heads touching, their limbs tangled. One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand. Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways in which we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us.