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And the Mountains Echoed Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
On May 21, 2013, the new novel from Khaled Hosseini: an unforgettable story about finding a lost piece of yourself in someone else.
Khaled Hosseini, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each passing minute.
- Listening Length14 hours and 1 minute
- Audible release dateMay 21, 2013
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB00BR3YJWO
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
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Product details
Listening Length | 14 hours and 1 minute |
---|---|
Author | Khaled Hosseini |
Narrator | Khaled Hosseini, Navid Negahban, Shohreh Aghdashloo |
Whispersync for Voice | Ready |
Audible.com Release Date | May 21, 2013 |
Publisher | Penguin Audio |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B00BR3YJWO |
Best Sellers Rank | #8,761 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #239 in Family Life Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #400 in Literary Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #653 in Family Life Fiction (Books) |
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In marvelously poetic language, each chapter is woven like a thread in the tapestry of the tale, adding another character that is important and touches the lives of the original brother, sister, or impoverished father. We travel from the farmland that the father took his children across the desert into the city, into the streets of Paris, across the sea into Greece, and even farther into the busy streets of California, each adding a character and another layer to the story of this family.
While the constant change in direction can feel jarring in the beginning, it soon becomes apparent that these tales each play a vital role in the development of the plot. In essence, the storyline is linear and circular all at the same time, if the reader will only be patient enough to see it through. We meet many different characters who intersect in the journey of these two little children at the beginning of the book, or who impacted them in some way, and what made these people into who they were in the present moment. In short, Hosseini reminds the reader that we shouldn't judge until we have walked in someone else's shoes.
One of my favorite chapter-tales was story of the American doctor who arrived in Afghanistan to do foreign aide work and service. During his time, he realized how selfish he was and even how selfish his own children were back home. Without giving away the entire story, I was blown away by how easy he was to relate to and how completely he affected me. Why? Because he returned home and ever so slowly grew numb again to all that he had awakened to in his time in Afghanistan. I sobbed into those pages and felt the air crush from lungs, because I could see so clearly how mind-numbingly easy we are to forget. We. Simply. Forget. Rather than hang onto our endeavors to change the world and make things better, it's easier to forget and grow numb; it's easier to live in our simple lives and forget that life is not so easy for others. In short, this chapter hit way too close to home. The mirror was held up to me, and I cried.
After that chapter. I had to set the book aside for about two weeks. I would look at it and close my eyes with real sadness. What power Hosseini had used in language, words, and story to show me my own weaknesses. That chapter wasn't just about mankind. It was about me, and I've thought about it ever since.
In short, I was blown away by And the Mountains Echoed. While some readers have felt the narrative thread was not as cohesive as they would like, in that it was not a linear story with the main characters followed throughout, I have to say that I thought this was his most powerful novel to date. The echoes of what human connection, family, and kindness can do were not lost on me. This was a game changer in a novel and whispered of action in ways that telling me never would have done. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
So why trust my opinion? Let me explain.
There are lots of talented authors out there but often where they excel in one area, they seem to falter in another. There are skilled grammarians, wondrous wordsmiths and magicians of metaphor, but even equipped with all that they fail to produce a story that flows and that holds a reader's interest. Then there are the gifted raconteurs, writers who rule with style rather than language, and take readers so deep into their own world that those people forget they're just sitting in a chair with a book in their hand.
There are great writers and then there are great storytellers. Khaled Hosseini is both.
"And The Mountains Echoed" is his finest work. Complex, interweaving, always poignant, and often heartbreaking. The novel is prefaced by a story that establishes a perpetually bittersweet undercurrent and it shares the same central theme of family and friendship that his previous novels are known for, yet the myriad of stories he includes here makes these themes seem much weightier by comparison. Set in Afghanistan, America, and France and spanning more than 50 years, the novel takes the reader into many a character's private hopes, dreams, joys, regrets, and pain, and the six degrees of separation between them all. Hosseini described it as "revolving around brothers and sisters, and the ways in which they love, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for each other."
I was moved many times as I read this, in particular by the book's opening involving the folktale of the div who stole away children from a village. That story alone was enough to make my heart ache but there was much more wrenching stuff to come. I loved how he began it with the brother and sister, how it mirrored the story of the div, and that he closed the book with those siblings - it made it feel like everything came full circle. I also loved the common thread of each character having some sort of void within themselves, and how each struggled with it and/or desperately tried to fill it.
Much as I would like to say this novel is perfect, it isn't. There are sections here that didn't seem in keeping with and/or had tenuous connective threads to the rest of the story. The chapter featuring Idris seemed as though it was written more for the purpose of elucidating a Westerner's limited knowledge of the inherent problems in Afghanistan. The chapter featuring Markos seems solely an examination on friendship and the relationship between mother and son. If these sections hadn't been a part of the novel, they could certainly stand on their own as short stories.
"And The Mountains Echoed" is the type of book that I very much see being added to - and pushed to the forefront of - required reading lists for high schools nationwide in that the enormity of its themes and its observations on the sociopolitical climate in Afghanistan are of significant value in the realm of contemporary literature. It is destined to become a new classic.
Top reviews from other countries
However at the same time, this book's style is quite different from his previous few books. Here the story goes from generation to generation, continent to continent, from characters to interrelated characters. The book just consist 9 chaps, quite unlike his previous book, but the nine chapters have the capability not only to surpass, in quality, but to etch something extraordinarily saddening and heartening. Though in some cases his previous books are greater than this, but still for a reader who likes to read, will definitely find this book as great as his previous ones, simply because it cannot be disliked.