And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini, 2013
Historical fiction Contemporary fiction
A father's impossible choice in a village fable opens into a novel about siblings, separation, and the long echo of one decision. A quiet, tender family story that moves at a reflective pace, with fable-like passages and a steady ache of longing underneath.
Feels like longing, serenity and tenderness. About family, love and memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy family sagas about siblings and separation, told with warmth and a sense of fable. Its story widens across decades and several voices, so the central thread can feel loose if you want one continuous narrator.
Why read it
It shows how one hard decision can travel through a family for generations, and it offers a humane look at love, duty, and the distances between people.
A page from the book
The worst choice a parent can be asked to make, settled by rocks.
What can I say to you of the anguish that Baba Ayub and his wife suffered that night? No parent should have to make a choice such as this. Out of the children’s earshot, Baba Ayub and his wife debated what they should do. They talked and wept and talked and wept. All night, they went back and forth, and, as dawn neared, they had yet to reach a decision—which was perhaps what the div wanted, as their indecision would allow it to take five children instead of one. In the end, Baba Ayub collected from just outside the house five rocks of identical size and shape. On the face of each he scribbled the name of one child, and when he was done he tossed the rocks into a burlap sack. When he offered the bag to his wife, she recoiled as though it held a venomous snake. Khaled Hosseini.Hosseini was born in Kabul in 1965; his family left Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion and settled in California, where he trained as a physician.
Books that feel like this
More by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini, 2007
Two Afghan women, a generation apart, are thrown together by war and a violent marriage—and discover what loyalty can be built from ruin.
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini, 2003
A boy in 1970s Kabul betrays the friend who would do anything for him, and spends the rest of his life learning whether a person can be good again.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is And the Mountains Echoed for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy family sagas about siblings and separation, told with warmth and a sense of fable. Its story widens across decades and several voices, so the central thread can feel loose if you want one continuous narrator.
- What is And the Mountains Echoed like?
- A quiet, tender family story that moves at a reflective pace, with fable-like passages and a steady ache of longing underneath. Feels like longing, serenity and tenderness. About family, love and memory.
- What should I read after And the Mountains Echoed?
- If you liked And the Mountains Echoed, try Intermezzo (Sally Rooney), It Ends with Us (Colleen Hoover) and One Italian Summer (Rebecca Serle).
A taste of the feed
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I had never considered that you might miss a job like you missed a limb—a constant, reflexive thing. I hadn’t thought that as well as the obvious fears about money, and your future, losing your job would make you feel inadequate, and a bit useless. That it would be harder to get up in the morning than when you were rudely shocked into consciousness by the alarm. That you might miss the people you worked with, no matter how little you had in common with them. Or even that you might find yourself searching for familiar faces as you walked the high street.
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