Do siblings separated at infancy feel so strongly about them even after all the years of leading their own lives oblivious of the existence of the other? Is it possible to love people from your past undyingly and unconditionally day-in and day-out? How does one react to the facts of their own birth and parentage revealed to them at later point of one’s life when the parents themselves are dead? These are not some of the questions that a person from a standard middle-class upbringing like me can answer but Hosseini tackles these themes time and again and that is probably because he knows them better.

I was clear how I felt about Hosseini’s earlier works; I loved The Kite Runner and didn’t like A Thousand Splendid Suns. But his latest work And the Mountains Echoed about siblings estranged at their childhood left me polarized. For a book about Afghanistan, this stays thankfully clear of any political inclinations and neither is this antiwar rhetoric but it deals with a story which is humane and universal in its appeal. That however, does not make this a flawless creation especially considering the gross injustice it metes out to its most fascinating character Nila Wahdati (IMHO), but more on that later.

The story begins with a poor Afghan farmer from a fictional village Shahbagh narrating a bed-time fable to his children which is set in a mystic land of divs and jinns. It is a story about a father having to choose between one of his sons to send as a prey to a dangerous jinn and his guilt for having done so to save his other children. This heart wrenching story serves as a fitting prologue and sets the precedent to the events that happen during the course of the lives of people inhabiting the land.

In his desire to create an ambitious multi-generational saga about Afghans sweeping across continents, Hosseini does not spend enough time with his characters which never lets them grow on us. We are never with a single character too long to root for them as the story quickly moves across to another character which was mentioned only feebly in one of the stories earlier. In that essence this might as well have been a collection of short stories.

There were a couple of irrelevant but highly interesting sub-plots which might stand alone high as short stories but are felt shoehorned into the narrative. Coincidentally one of those sub-plots about Idris, Timur and Roshi was the one segment which I loved the most in this book as I could totally relate myself to the way Idris feels a sense of purpose while leaving Afghanistan, but quickly regrets his decision as he tries to defend himself crawling back to his comfort zone.

The nine segments in the book allow the author to employ different narrative devices to introduce his characters and fittingly he chose the most interesting one(through an interview to a magazine) to narrate the story of Nila Wahdati. She portrays herself as this rebellious and free-spirited daughter scoffed at by her relatives and elders to the immense chagrin and disappointment of her father who goes to the extent of demeaning her poetry to the rants of a whore. Her relationship with her daughter was summed up in a poignant declaration that children will never be what we want them to be. However, at the end of the segment, Pari, her daughter deems most of her interview as a blatant lie which I felt was criminally unfair on the author’s part to leave it at that. It brings the character to an unsatisfying end and I can never be sure if I could believe what I learnt and loved about her.

For all the globe-trotting it does, And the Mountains Echoed at its heart is a bed-time story and it gratifies finally since you would want to put the kid to sleep by telling him a story which is what this book exactly does. Hosseini’s prose does not let much to miss your eye and it is a definite page turner. How I wish it to be more intimate.