The story moves back and forth, between the 1940s and the present, offering us glimpses of the aftermath of the Soviet invasion and a more detailed, though not always a nuanced, perspective on the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. Hosseini puts before us an assortment of other tales that mirror the stories of Abdullah and the older Pari. Whether those miserable beings are one’s folks is quite relevant, yet not the most reliable guideline owing to the fact that, sometimes, it is the greatest psychological ordeal to reach out to one’s family members – and also because sometimes we don’t even know who our folks are.Ĭreating a kind of echo chamber, Mr.

Hosseini is particularly interested in puzzling out the ways in which more privileged people decide what they can and can’t do for those who live in misery. His strength, as always, is good old-school storytelling, which is instantly gripping – the sort of thing that makes you sniffle a bit as you make your way through a bucket of popcorn in the relative comfort and safety of your living room or a movie theater. In his signature style, Hosseini weaves just the sort of yarn that gently tugs at the proverbial heartstrings of millions. It is Hosseini’s most assured and emotionally gripping story yet more fluent and ambitious than The Kite Runner (2003), and more intricate than A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007). If, at times, some threads of the story don’t quite match the heft of the rest, the effect of the plot as a whole is both unsettling and moving. The book’s multifaceted story is more globetrotting than Hosseini’s first two bestselling novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and is perhaps even more emotionally resonant.

Separated at birth, Pari and his brother Abdullah are reunited in the winter of their lives when, ironically, the latter has full-blown dementia and has lost most of his long-term memory. What they don’t want.Īnd the Mountains Echoedhas a pair of siblings at its heart. But really, what guides them is what they’re afraid of. It’s a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward. His books, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed, have been published in over seventy countries and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Today, Khaled Hosseini is one of the most recognized and bestselling authors in the world.

That was the dawn of one of the most influential writing careers. In March 2001, while practicing medicine, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, which was published by Riverhead Books in 2003.

His family first moved to Paris, and finally to the US, where he pursued his education. Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965.

And the mountains echoed author