And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

This book is written by the best selling author, Khaled Hosseini, who wrote the best-selling books, The Kite Runner and A 1000 Splendid Suns so when I picked it up at the library I was expecting to have good read. I had enjoyed the previous two books very much.

Like his previous books this one also takes place in Afghanistan, or at least it starts in Afghanistan but mostly it is about complicated family relationships. It starts with a poor Afghanistan family and how that family evolved through the next three and four generations. The book starts in 1950s.

You are drawn quickly into the story when you hear of the love of a brother for his younger sister. Sadly the younger sister is adopted by a wealthy couple and moves away from the family. This is to give her a better chance at life but the brother is never told this and so just does not understand. He does not know where she goes to live. Her uncle works for the wealthy couple and becomes one of the main characters in the book. After a breakup of the marriage, the mother who is French takes the young girl and goes to live in Paris.

From there the story gets complicated. Marriages, divorces and friendships come in quick succession and the story moves back and forth throughout the book between France, the USA, Greece and also back to Afghanistan. As life goes on the people in the book lived their lives, have children and we follow some of the children in their lives as well. At the very end of the book the brother and sister  now senior citizens, are finally reunited again but in very trying circumstances.


This book is very hard times to read. It is emotional and hardships occur within the families which until you read about them, you don't realize that these things happen. It's also quite complicated to read because of the many characters and the switching between the stories. I felt that times that it would've been helpful to have a family tree /friendship line drawn out somewhere at the beginning of the book so you could keep all the characters in your head.

I did not enjoy this book is much as the of the author's previous two books but it was well written and overall a good book.