Hosseini in peak form

Now he returns with one of the year’s most anticipated releases, a multi- generational saga of familial love, honour, sacrifice and betrayal, that not only meets all expectations but surpasses them.

Opening in 1952 in Shadbagh, a small village outside of Kabul, a father, Kaboor, recounts an ancient story of a giant and the family it destroys, before setting out for the city with his three year-old daughter, Pari, and her adoring older brother, Abdullah.

Kaboor has recently remarried to a woman who once, out of jealousy crippled her sister by pushing her from a tree, and the couple have already lost a child. Now, a terrible decision has been made: in an arrangement made by Kaboor’s brother in-law, the lovesick Nabi, Pari will be given to a wealthy family.

From here, the non-linear narrative expands, in prose at once evocative and concise, leaping back and forth across decades and oceans, working in a loose tangle akin to a series of interconnected stories.

We go with Pari to France, when her poetess mother, Nila finally flees a sham marriage; we live in war-torn Kabul with Nabi, chauffeur, cook and manservant to Mr Wahdati, the husband left behind and crippled by a stroke; we meet the US-raised cousins, Idris and Timur, who return home in the aftermath of 9/11 to reclaim their birthright; and we are there for the impossible and revelatory reunion when the story’s symphony hits its perfect closing note.

This is a story about belonging, about existing in a world that has spun out of control, about knowing your place and enduring. The blows are not softened — “Kabul is a thousand tragedies per square mile” — but glimpses of such suffering only serve to emphasise the moments of joy and the heroism of the lives lived.

The author’s family left Kabul when he was 11 years old, settling first in Paris and then, four years later, the United States. But it is the Afghanistan of his childhood and his dreams that drives and haunts his writing.

And the Mountains Echoed is a breathtaking achievement. In terms of scope, it displays a rare immensity, and its characterisations, narrative twists and, most of all, the sheer compassion of the storytelling, will leave readers quivering with joy. The result is a profoundly moving novel, undoubtedly one of the year’s highlights. It is also Mr Hosseini’s best and most ambitious work yet.

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