This fictional novel is based on events that are common with remote villages in the Afghan society.
Hosseini lures the reader in with a story set in the Fall season, in the year 1952. The story begins with a father telling a story of the divs, jinns and giants to his two children, Abdullah and Pari.
“And the Mountains Echoed” clearly lays out the struggles of the average father, how hard decision making can be, especially when it has to do with giving away one of your children.
In the little remote Afghan village where the story is set, poverty is imminent, and there are no grasses to feed livestock as the rain has ceased to bless its inhabitants with its cool touch.
The author manages to give definite descriptions of the characters. For example, Abdullah and Pari’s Father is described in this manner; “His name was Saboor. He was dark-skinned and had a hard face, angular and bony, nose curved like a desert hawk’s beak, eyes set deep in his skull. Father was thin as a reed, but a lifetime of work had made his muscles powerful, tightly wound like rattan strips around the arm of a wicker chair.”
Hosseini pricks the reader’s imagination with the activities of little Abdullah. The ten year old kid had to grow up taking care of Pari, his baby sister who was born the same day their mother died. Even with the emergence of a step mother; Parwana, young Abdullah still “was the first to rise with the cries of his baby sister” Pari who often referred to him as “Abollah!”
The young Pari, aged three (3) who developed a sturdy friendship with a dog whose ears and tail had been severed off; “Shuja” is one character that takes over the novel through the end until it ends in Winter, 2010.
Hosseini Khaled largely instils in the reader courage, persistence, resilience and the importance of family; “For always and always.”
Lay your hands on the book, it is a nice read
Author
Bello Olabisi, known to most individuals as Dorian is a literature student. She’s a dark poet with a weird sense of humor, a spoken word artist, a nature photographer, a freelance writer, an active volunteer and a lover of stuffed toys.