'And the Mountains Echoed' - Khaled Hosseini

Kabul can appear a desolate place. The largest city in Afghanistan, the media can at times depict it as simply a warzone, damaged by the Taliban and crippled by insurgents. However, Kabul is rich with history and culture that, despite the literal and metaphorical holes in it, is still largely prominent and remains to be important to its inhabitants. I reviewed Deborah Rodriguez's The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul in the past, admiring it for the way it brings Kabul to life and makes it a little more relatable; Khaled Hosseini has a similar gift. Born in the city itself, Hosseini now lives in California but he set up the Khaled Hosseini Foundation to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, clearly still feeling a connection to his birthplace through this and through his books.

Hosseini first won me over with The Kite Runner, an emotional story about two young boys in Afghanistan, one of whom is a Hazara which is considered by some to be an inferior race, and the other a wealthy Pashtun boy. The two best friends are confronted with the divide between them, and the Pashtun boy feels he has to choose between his father's affection or protecting his friend from bullies. The story follows the guilt that takes decades to put right. I continued to love Hosseini with his next novel A Thousand Splendid Sons, but then had to wait six years before his third book, And the Mountains Echoed,  which appeared on the shelves in 2013. Finally, two years later, I settled down to read it, with high expectations that I had already been warned might not be fulfilled.

The way Hosseini follows a story through a character's lifetime is the same technique he adopts for in And the Mountains Echoed. This book also causes heartbreak before the story has barely begun. Abdullah and his little sister Pari share an extremely close bond. They both live with their father and step-mother in a mud hut in Shadbagh until the father feels he has no choice but to sell his daughter to a wealthy family so that they all might live. Hosseini uses different voices from there to tell the story of how the separation affected both of them as well as chronicling Kabul's tragic recent history and its effect on both their lives. 

As usual, Hosseini has a way of reminding you when reading his books what real problems are, particularly the choice between life or death and how common this choice is in a country like Afghanistan. It certainly puts things into perspective. And the Mountains Echoed is also beautifully written, almost poetic, emphasising the strength and the lasting effect of memories, no matter how small they are. He tends to avoid fairytales in his books, perhaps to make them more realistic,  but he still leaves you satisfied if not a little sad.

Unfortunately, the forewarning I had been given was right; it did not live up to his previous works. It lacked the same intensity, the same magnetism. It started similar to his others, but I felt as though it lost its way, and by the time I had reached the halfway point it felt as though Hosseini had missed the opportunity to make it right. The emotion that was first so prevalent had dissipated and the last few pages that would usually have made me teary-eyed actually left me feeling a little disappointed. I suppose it is Khaled Hosseini's realism and fairytale aversion, but for me, it was just an anti-climax. I will still read his next novel, if there is one, if only to give Hosseini another chance to draw me back in to life in Kabul.