Hosseini, Khaled-And the Mountains Echoed

Hosseini, Khaled-And the Mountains Echoed
Genre:

Description: The novel begins with a folk tale about a div, a giant of Afghan folklore, who steals the youngest son of an impoverished family in a village blighted by droughts. When the father sets out to find the child, the div shows him that the child is living happily in a palace, playing with other children. The father then has to decide whether to turn back and leave his son where he is or take him back to a difficult life in the village. This allegorical tale is told by a father to his children, Abdullah and Pari, the day before they take a long and difficult journey from their village to Kabul, where the father leaves one of them with a rich childless couple in the hope that it will save his family from the coming harsh winter. The separation of the two siblings is at the heart of this sprawling, sweeping tale, which reads like a series of intertwined short stories, told from various perspectives by a large cast of characters, in first person and third person, some chapters written in the form of a letter, one taking the form of a Q&A interview.