And the Mountains Echoed

And the Mountains Echoed is the third novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2013 by Riverhead Books, it departs from Hosseini’s style in his first two books, choosing to avoid focusing on any single character. Instead, the book is written in a style similar to a collection of short stories, with each of the nine chapters told from the point of view of a different character. The book is built around 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. This event connects the various stories. Hosseini says his intention was to make the characters more complex and morally ambiguous. Continuing a familial theme established in his previous novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, And the Mountains Echoed focuses on the relationship between siblings. In addition to Abdullah and Bari, Hosseini presents other fraternal relationships, such as the relationship between his stepmother, Parawana, and her disabled sister, Masoumeh, and an Afghan-American doctor named Idris and his cousin, Timur.