And the Mountains Echoed Hardcover – 21 May 2013

EXCELLENT READ

This is for me but have not read it yet. However I have high expectations for it and given it 5 stars!

A beautifully written story with a lyrical dream like quality to it, I've really enjoyed the read.The story begins with two young siblings utterly devoted to each other growing up in an impoverished Afghan village in the 1950s. They have an uncle who works as a chauffeur for a rich family in Kabul, a city which could hardly be different to poverty ridden little village they live in. Worst still the beautiful lady of the house wears short dresses, makeup and goes to the cinema to watch films, shocking stuff. If that wasn't bad enough she also writes erotic poetry....The uncle is deeply in love with her but sadly she is not interested in him, when his car arrives in the village of the children people are fascinated by him, it's the only car they've ever scene. We follow the Uncle right the way up to old age, people begin to disappear from his life, wars happen, followed by gangs which take over the streets, he inherits the mansion of the former owners but is unable to maintain it and it crumbles. Later the Taliban take over before being overthrown by the US. The uncle pens a letter to his English language teacher dated 2002 in which he recounts his long life. It's a life filled with interesting experiences but also tainted by sadness and society is gradually ruined around him.The novel employs lots of different structures to develop the story, characters talking to each-other, characters talking to themselves, characters being interviewed, characters writing letters, characters looking back at their lives...The story switches to France in the 1970s, where the beautiful wife from Kabul and the little girl from the village live together as mother and daughter. I loved the way the book captured the mood of the times and the contrast between the two women. The daughter being forced to live under her mother's shadow and self-centred lifestyle. The book plays with the history of the mother. She makes lots of claims about her early life, her daughter is sceptical knowing her better than most. We all have a tendency to miss-remembers or have selective memories though. The lack of clarity is interesting. Was her father an intolerant brute and misogynist or was he a loving father worried about his wild self-destructive daughter?The story follows different characters at different points, affected by the changes in Afghan and world history, each with a plausible arc. There is a young boy who grows up adoring his well respected village elder father, who in his eyes is something of legend, a war hero and a blessing to his people. The boy wants for nothing, although his family must employ bodyguards to protect them from the wrong kind of people. His young mother lives a simple shallow kind of life, enjoying the money, modern luxuriates and devoting herself to endless fitness sessions in front of the TV. An encounter with another boy in the area changes the sons view of the world though, and he comes to realise his father is more like a mafia Godfather than a hero. There's no firm easy resolution to all the characters' problems in these stories, the best you can say is that the arrive at a better understanding of the world and are able to accommodate this.One critique I'd make of the writing is a lot of the characters seem to have slightly unrealistic professions, a lot of them seem to be a doctor or an artist or a poet or a mathematician or an actress or a restaurant owner, the later seemingly a bit more plausible than most of the others. To be fair to the author though all these people still lead very complex & sometimes rather unsatisfying lives.

Having read not so good reviews about Hosseini's third novel, I was a little sceptical whether to read the book. Hosseini's previous books have had so much impression on me that I was curious to know more of his works.The book opens with a dreadful fairy tale (a child is sacrificed to the Evil Jinny in order to save others ) that was presumably told by a father to his children. This puts you off reading for a while but it's Hossaini's talent and his story telling gift to make you emotionally bound to the story and its characters. Whatever I thought cruel and unreal is an actual theme of the novel: you make sacrifices "sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand" - that hurts, really hurts and tears never stop dropping but you still continue reading because you sympathise with the characters and search answers for others' cruelty.10-year-old Abdullah is torn away from his beloved sister, Pari, who is sold to a rich family in Kabul. The story is told from different characters and the flow is not chronological- it is rather built as a serious of tales, each told in a different style from a different point of view. Unlike other reviewers, I love the way it is written- you get insight into each character and realise their struggle for happiness. I even made a parallel between Amir from the Kite Runner and Idriss- an Afghan born American doctor who promises to help Roshi- a victim of the brutal murder and his inability to do so- to sacrifice his wealth to help the poor creature. I think Hosssaini complicates our thoughts about generosity, all of his characters are complicated too- as the story unfolds, you get to know them better, you realise and revise your judgement about them and recognise the good in the bad or opposite.I also loved how almost all characters are then linked to each other, cross each other's way in their accounts: you later realise that Abdullah in Idriss's story is your main character you've been waiting to read about all the way through. You learn more About Nila from Pari's account as well as Nabi`s. Its not an easy read, Hussaini deviates from his writing style in his previous novels, but I found this twist quite interesting. It does test your patience though.I also liked the way Hossaini tries to break from rigid rules- Nila is an example of a revolutionary woman who wouldn't follow strict Afgan rules of being a "sacred" because you're woman, the character you love and hate at the time. It was also surprising to raise the issue of a gay love on a very subtle level- this was something new I discovered in this novel. The author touches many issues here in one piece of work: true brother-sister love, revolutionary woman, one's inability to sacrifice his wealth to help others, on the other hand a devotion of the cheuffer to his employer, Pari`s loyalty on the cost of her own happiness. I did find some parts too brutal to picture, but overall it was fantastic!I think the book is the literature masterpiece and should be among bestsellers.