And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

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There’s an insurmountable amount of both joy and devastation in how many books there are in the world and how many great books I am yet to read. And, really, you have to kiss some toads and frogs on the journey to them. 

I read Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2017 and The Kite Runner in 2020 and the former immediately cemented him as an auto read author in my books. I cannot give any explanation for the delay in reading And the Mountains Echoed, but I am very happy I didn’t read it until now — I think I can appreciate the skill better. 

Khaled doesn’t introduce you to a character or a setting. There’s no talking stage. No starter. You plunge straight into the meat and dessert with the familiarity of a third book in a trilogy, even though you’ve never met any of the characters before. One second you haven’t started the book, the next you’re deep in Shadbagh — an Afghan city that doesn’t even exist! You hardly even know whose pov you’re reading from until halfway through a chapter yet, you're moored to the promise of unadulterated storytelling. 


(Unrelated: every time I use a dash I think of AI and really, no. All this drama comes from within.)



There’s an enormous appreciation of literature and diction in Khaled’s writing, I almost accused myself of analphabeticism. ‘Ascetic’ when he could have said ‘austere’?? 


I don’t know how many times I exclaimed “Oh Khaled, the man that you are!” And truly, he is!!


Five stars, no bars. 

Comments

  1. Hlela16 June 2026 at 17:47

    I’m very convinced that this should be my next read! Also I get the part about dashes! Every time I write a good reads review, I try to avoid dashes bc of AI! But sometimes it just can’t be helped! Thanks for the review and welcome back x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Zo16 June 2026 at 18:32

    Although I remember the feeling of this book, thanks to my bad memory, I can look forward to reading it again soon.
    It is good to have you and your diction back:)

    ReplyDelete

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