And the Mountains Echoed

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Saboor, an impoverished farmer from the fictional village of Shadbagh, decides to sell his three-year-old daughter Pari to a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul. Abdullah adores Pari, and helps collect various feathers for her which she loves. The book raises many deep questions about the wavering line between right and wrong, and whether it is possible to be purely “good”—or purely “bad.” What do you think after reading the novel: Are good intentions enough to create good deeds? Can positive actions come from selfish motivations? Can bad come from positive intent? How do you think this novel would define a good person? How would you define one? A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.’ a b Italie, Hillel (June 2, 2013). "Khaled Hosseini on his new novel "And the Mountains Echoed" ". Denver Post . Retrieved September 5, 2013.

In one story line we learn that Parwana's brother Nabi, chauffeur and houseman to the Wahdatis, brokered the sale of Pari, a deed that haunts him for the rest of his life.

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With his third and most ambitious novel yet, Hosseini makes it clear that he’s not ready to rest on his Big Name. . . . While it hits all the Hosseini sweet spots—nostalgia, devastating details, triumph over the odds— And the Mountains Echoed covers more ground, both geographically and emotionally, than his previous works. It’s not until Hosseini makes the novel small again, for the poignant conclusion, that you fully appreciate what he’s accomplished.”— Entertainment Weekly (A) his most assured and emotionally gripping story yet, more fluent and ambitious than The Kite Runner, more narratively complex than A Thousand Splendid Suns…Mr. Hosseini's narrative gifts have deepened over the years, enabling him to anchor firmly the more maudlin aspects of his tale in genuine emotion and fine-grained details. And so we finish this novel with an intimate understanding of who his characters are and how they've defined themselves over the years through the choices they have made between duty and freedom, familial responsibilities and independence, loyalty to home and exile abroad.

It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.” Khaled Hosseini chose to tell the story in a "fragmented and fluid" form; [15] each of the nine chapters is told from a different character's perspective, and each narrative provides an interconnection with the others'. Los Angeles Times critic Wendy Smith compared this style to the classic One Thousand and One Nights. [15] Transports you whole into the otherworldly realms Hosseini builds in Kabul, Paris, San Francisco, and the Greek islands. . . . There’s something primary and beautiful about the simple desire to get lost in a story, and Hosseini is an expert manufacturer of that experience.”— Harper’s Bazaar Climax:While And the Mountains Echoed is, in many ways, a collection of short vignettes, each of which can be said to have a climax, the climax of the entire novel arguably comes in Chapter Nine, when Pari reunites with her brother, Abdullah. And the Mountains Echoed is the third novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2013 by Riverhead Books, it deviates from Hosseini's style in his first two works through his choice to avoid focusing on any one character. Rather, the book is written similarly to a collection of short stories, with each of the nine chapters being told from the perspective of a different character. The book's foundation is built on the relationship between ten-year-old Abdullah and his three-year-old sister Pari and their father's decision to sell her to a childless couple in Kabul, an event that ties the various narratives together.He pleads and wails against Saboor's rule that he could not cry in Kabul as Ms. Wahdati tries to assure him that the arrangement is for the best and he will understand when he is older. All my life, I have lived like an aquarium fish in the safety of a glass tank, behind a barrier as impenetrable as it has been transparent. I have been free to observe the glimmering world on the other side, to picture myself in it, if I like. But I have always been contained, hemmed in, by the hard, unyielding confines of the existence that Baba has constructed for me, at first knowingly, when I was young, and now guilelessly, now that he is fading day by day. I think I have grown accustomed to the glass and am terrified that when it breaks, when I am alone, I will spill out into the wide open unknown and flop around, helpless, lost, gasping for breath."

The book opens with a legend about a giant who would go to a village and demand a child be sacrificed to him. A father was forced to give up his favorite son, and he was so heartbroken and upset that he later left the village to try and retrieve him from the giant. But when he arrived at the giant's house after many days of walking, he saw that his son was happy and was living a better life than he could have provided. The giant takes pity on the father and gives him a potion to help him forget his son. But did the father ever really forget? Like [Hosseini’s] previous books, the new novel is a complex mosaic, a portrait of the Afghan diaspora as it is folded into the West and of those left behind. . . . The book is elevated by a strong sense of parable and some finely drawn characters and is inventively constructed as it leaps from voice to voice.”— EsquireWHAT?! A new book by Khaled Hosseini? I can't...I just can't....I can't even think straight right now BECAUSEOHMYGOODNESSIAMSOSOSOSOSOSOSOEXCIIIIIIIIIITED!!!!!!!!