Bookclub-in-a-Box Discusses And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini: The Complete Guide for Readers and Leaders

Bookclub-in-a-Box literary discussion guides offer interpretations and analysis of the themes, symbols, and writing styles of your favorite contemporary novels. Each guide also includes a handy plot synopsis, the author's biographical information, discussion questions, and more. They are ideal for use by book club members, teachers, students, and literature lovers. Discussion guide does not include the novel itself.

About And the Mountains Echoed: The novel opens with a father’s haunting folktale about a monstrous div, a giant of Afghan folklore, who knocks on the door of a poor family and demands that a favorite son be surrendered. When the father sets out to reclaim the child, the div shows him to be living happily in a paradise, playing with other children. The father is given a choice: Either take the boy home to a grim life in a village blighted by drought, or leave him where he is — with the promise to never see him again. It is a fable meant to prepare the children of Saboor, the poor Afghan father telling the story, for the coming rupture in their own lives when three-year-old Pari is separated from her beloved brother Abdullah and sold to a wealthy couple in Kabul. The consequences of this desperate act echo down through the generations, radiating from Afghanistan to France, Greece, and America.

The novel reads much like a series of linked short stories, with each chapter focusing on a primary character who shares a connection, by blood or fate, to the novel’s central tragedy. Spanning decades, continents, and generations, And the Mountains Echoed is a powerfully woven story of the joys, sorrows, sacrifices, and betrayals that both bind and fracture families.