And The Mountains Echoed

This third novel from Khaled Hosseini is a return to form for the author the bestselling book The Kite Runner. I loved that book. It was a doorway into a world I had no concept of. His second outing, A Thousand Splendid Suns, focused mainly on the lives of Muslim women and the domestic abuse that some of them have to face. I wasn’t sure if I was a fan of it as much as The Kite Runner, but I liked it enough to want to read his most recent piece, And The Mountains Echoed.

This book is a sweeping tapestry of stories from Afghanistan, with a pit-stop in Paris, and jumps through time as we visit upon a multitude of characters whose lives intertwine and are torn apart. The first chapter featured a story within a story (i.e. one of the characters is telling a fable), which threw me off and didn’t really make me want to continue reading, but the fable fits well with the storyline and once I got over that hump, I just could not put this book down. Beautiful, poetic, and downright moving, And The Mountains Echoed is a wonderful read that I would highly suggest.