And The Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini

I read both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns as soon as they were released and was really blown away by both of them, moved to tears so many times (the kind of gulping oh my god I’m bawling type of tears). I wanted to read And The Mountains Echoed as soon as it was released too, but ended up on a never-ending library book wait list (for over three years) and kind of forgot about it.

I’m so glad I finally read it though. Hosseini remains one of my favorite contemporary authors with such a talent for creating beautiful prose, and for being a wonderful storyteller, weaving tradition and culture into the narrative. And The Mountains Echoed is a little different from his previous novels in that it hops from differently characters and times quite abruptly. Each character is associated with the general story line and other characters, but has their own story which is just as important as the others’. 

I absolutely loved this book, I loved how we skip from one character to another, how the book feels like a collection of narratives that are all pieces together in the reader’s mind. Don’t be put off by the way the story skips ahead in order to fall back again, it all ends up making complete sense, and creates such a rich and tangled narrative.

I’ve always wanted to go to Afghanistan, ever since I was a child. I don’t know why, but Hosseini just makes me want to go even more: the deep history, the mythical heritages, the people... And The Mountains Echoed tells of poverty and hardships so terrible that many of us wouldn’t even be able to really imagine them, but also if the simple joys of life, of human nature and it’s downfalls, and of love. How one terrible decision made under duress creates ramifications that affect not only those involved but generations down the line.