And the Mountains Echoed

Historical fiction

First published: 2013
Print length: 446 pagesRiverhead Books, 2014

Description

In 1952, impoverished farmer Saboor walks from the Afghan village of Shadbagh to Kabul with his young daughter Pari, intending to sell her. Her devoted older brother Abdullah, who has helped raise her, follows without understanding that their separation has already been arranged. That rupture forms the center of a novel told through linked perspectives, each chapter shifting to another character and another angle on the consequences of family decisions. Across years and places, sibling and sibling-like bonds echo Abdullah and Pari’s loss, revealing acts of care entangled with abandonment, necessity, resentment, and sacrifice. Rather than following one continuous viewpoint, the novel assembles a widening network of lives to examine how love can bind families together while also becoming the reason they wound one another.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Descriptive · Lyrical

Pace

Measured

Tone

Intimate · Melancholic · Reflective · Wistful

Structure

Episodic · Linked collection · Nonlinear

Focus

Character · Relationships

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

ClassFamilyGriefLoveMemoryMigration and displacement

About Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan American novelist, former physician, and UNHCR goodwill ambassador whose writing is closely informed by migration and Afghan family life. Born in Kabul in 1965 to a diplomat father, he lived briefly in Iran and France before his family sought asylum in the United States when he was 15. He did not return to Afghanistan until 2003, the year his debut novel, The Kite Runner, appeared; his experience of returning resembles that of the book’s protagonist. Hosseini grew up reading Persian poetry, particularly Rumi, Omar Khayyám, Abdul-Qādir Bēdil, and Hafez, and his fiction combines direct, descriptive storytelling with lyrical passages. His novels show war, displacement, and political upheaval through their effects on relationships among parents, children, siblings, and friends. The Kite Runner centers guilt and exile in a friendship divided by class, while A Thousand Splendid Suns follows two women whose alliance develops amid domestic abuse, civil conflict, and Taliban rule. The illustrated Sea Prayer extends his attention to displacement beyond Afghanistan through a Syrian father’s address to his son.

Books by Khaled Hosseini

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Riverhead Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9781594633102

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.