Genre: Fiction
Pages: 402
Author: Khaled Hosseini, Afghan-American
Setting: Kabul, Afghanistan, Paris, America
Themes: Family, love, loss
‘If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, to all the rooms inside. Without it, you ended up wayward without a proper home or a legitimate identity.’
- Excerpt from And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
***
Khaled’s prose will always have you thinking deeply about your identity and having gratitude for the privilege to which you’ve been accustomed.
This book brought out all the emotions of empathy coursing through my veins. Pari and Abdallah, two siblings born of the same parents in a lowly city, are separated from childhood when their father chooses to sell Pari to a wealthy family in Kabul in order to have a livelihood for his family. The ache with which this separation comes, especially to Abdallah is insufferable.
The plot of the story unfolds from the Fall of 1952 to the Winter of 2010.
The unravelling of the history between the separation of the siblings leading up to their re-union; the war and the transition of power in Kabul and the ultimate restoration of Afghanistan and the war-torn cities will have you gripped to this book.
I’m definitely rating this a 5 stars!
Let me know what you thought about the book in case you’ve read it.
Cheers.