From My Bookshelf

I just finished reading another excellent book... "And the Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini.

The author was born in Afghanistan and moved to the United States with his family when he was a teenager.  He studied medicine and had been practicing as a physician for ten years when he wrote his first novel, "The Kite Runner".  (A book which I have also read.)  It was a best seller, and Hosseini since then has devoted himself to writing as well as working with the United Nation commission for refugees.

"And the Mountains Echoed" is his third novel.  The story begins in 1952.  Abdullah and his beloved baby sister Pari live in an impoverished Afghan village.  Severe economic conditions force their father to sell his daughter to a wealthy family in Kabul who are childless and wish to adopt a child.

The novel continues through the decades of Afghanistan's tumultuous history up to 2010.  Each of the nine chapters is written through the perspective of a different character.  This may be the novel's greatest flaw.  A couple of the characters have only the most tenuous connection with the story of Abdullah and Pari.  For example, one chapter deals with the life of a Greek surgeon who ends up going to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban to do relief work.  While the chapter is interesting and could stand alone as a novella, the reader is a bit impatient to get back to the fate of the central characters.  Will Abdullah and Pari ever meet again?

Nevertheless, "And the Mountains Echoed" is a compelling novel that I highly recommend.