When 01.06.2013
'The Kite Runner' author Khaled Hosseini talks about his latest novel 'And The Mountains Echoed' in a press junket interview in Afghanistan. He talks about how the story evolves, the inspiration for the title and why he began the book with a fable.
He mentions that the story began with an image of a brother and sister who live in a poor part of Afghanistan. 'What happens in Kabul ruptures the bond between the brother and the sister, who love each other dearly; it separates them', he explains. 'And this one act of separation becomes the trunk of the novel which is shaped like a tree.' He says that the title came from the poem 'The Nurses Song' by William Blake. '[It] had a line in it that said 'All the hills echoed' which I found extremely lovely and evocative but I wrote mountains instead because obviously Afghan typography is full of mountains', he reveals. He also revealed that he began the book with a fable because 'that fable sets up many of the themes that are then revisited in the novel again and again'.
