Hosseini himself has described the novel as more global and “ less Afghan centric“ than his previous books. This part of the novel unfolds on the Greek island of Tinos, while other parts of the novel are set in Paris and San Francisco, ranging far beyond the small village of Shadbagh, where the novel opens.
It’s a well-written section of the book, but seems to be included for not entirely justifiable reasons, simply adding further complexity to the already complex, multi-stranded plot. The chapter narrated by the Greek doctor Markos in a long flashback, which tells of his friendship with Thalia, a girl disfigured after being bitten by a dog, seems to be inserted solely to explain why Markos chose to be a plastic surgeon and make his way to Afghanistan.
I wanted to read more about them – and less about some of the others. While reading, I often felt that I wanted the novel to have a smaller cast, only because some of the characters struck me as so much more interesting than others: for example, the story of the children’s stepmother Parwana and her disabled twin sister Massoma, or the Afghan-American cousins Idris and Timur who return to visit war-ravaged Kabul, where the used car salesman Timur makes deals while the doctor Idris finds it difficult to cope with the burden of guilt he feels at the sight of suffering he has been spared from. The separation of the two siblings is at the heart of this sprawling, sweeping tale, which reads like a series of intertwined short stories, told from various perspectives by a large cast of characters, in first person and third person, some chapters written in the form of a letter, one taking the form of a Q&A interview. This allegorical tale is told by a father to his children, Abdullah and Pari, the day before they take a long and difficult journey from their village to Kabul, where the father leaves one of them with a rich childless couple in the hope that it will save his family from the coming harsh winter.
The father then has to decide whether to turn back and leave his son where he is or take him back to a difficult life in the village.
When the father sets out to find the child, the div shows him that the child is living happily in a palace, playing with other children. Cover of And the Mountains Echoed.The novel begins with a folk tale about a div, a giant of Afghan folklore, who steals the youngest son of an impoverished family in a village blighted by droughts.
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