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''And the Mountains Echoed'' is the third novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2013 by Riverhead Books, it deviates from Hosseini's style in his first two works through his choice to avoid focusing on any one character. Rather, the book is written similarly to a collection of short stories, with each of the nine chapters being told from the perspective of a different character. The book's foundation is built on the relationship between ten-year-old Abdullah and his three-year-old sister Pari and their father's decision to sell her to a childless couple in Kabul, an event that ties the various narratives together. Hosseini stated his intentions to make the characters more complex and morally ambiguous. Continuing the familial theme established in his previous novels, ''The Kite Runner'' and ''A Thousand Splendid Suns'', ''And the Mountains Echoed'' centers on the rapport between siblings. Besides Abdullah and Pari, Hosseini introduced two other sibling and sibling-like relationships—the children's stepmother Parwana and her disabled sister Masooma and an Afghan-American doctor named Idris and his cousin Timur. As it was Hosseini's first novel to be published in six years, ''And the Mountains Echoed'' was reportedly in high demand. It received favorable pre-publication reviews and was anticipated as another strong success, reaching the top 10 on Amazon.com before its release and later becoming a bestseller. Five months after the publication of ''And the Mountains Echoed'', it was reported that three million copies had been sold. == Composition and publication == Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan but left the country in 1976 at the age of 11, eventually moving to the United States where he worked as a doctor. He wrote his first novel, ''The Kite Runner'', in 2003 and became a full-time writer a year and a half later. He published his second book, ''A Thousand Splendid Suns'', in 2007. Both novels were successful, and by the time of his third publication they had together sold over 38 million copies across 70 countries. Hosseini first began to consider the plot of ''And the Mountains Echoed'' during a 2007 trip to Afghanistan with the UN Refugee Agency. While there, he heard stories from several village elders about the deaths of young, impoverished children during the winters, which gave the foundation for the fundamental event of the novel: a parent's choice to sell a child to prevent this from occurring.〔 "The novel began very, very small, and it began with a single image in my head that I simply could not shed," he relayed. "It was the image of a man walking across the desert and he's pulling a little Radio Flyer red wagon, and in it there's a little girl about 3 years old, and there's a boy walking behind him, and these three people are walking across the desert." Hosseini originally planned for it to be written in a linear fashion similar to his previous novels, but, during the writing process, it was expanded to cover a series of interconnected stories surrounding a large number of characters not directly related to each other. Comparing the process to a tree, he stated that story "just branched out" and "got bigger and bigger as it went along". As is his pattern, Hosseini drew on his early experiences in Afghanistan to create the foundation of the book.〔 He states that his travels to Afghanistan later in life also influenced his writing, albeit involuntarily. For example, during a 2009 visit he met two young sisters in a remote village outside Kabul. The older one, who he estimated to be around six years old, acted as a mother figure to the younger girl. Hosseini stated that their bond formed the foundation of the relationship between Abdullah and Pari in the novel. ''And the Mountains Echoed'' became the first to not deal directly with the Taliban, which featured prominently in both of his previous works. Though Hosseini did not consciously decide to avoid that topic, he stated that he was glad that he had moved away from it in order to keep the storyline fresh.〔 The characters' struggles were largely personal and unrelated to the political turmoil in Afghanistan. Hosseini added, "I hope a day will come when we write about Afghanistan, where we can speak about Afghanistan in a context outside of the wars and the struggles of the last 30 years. In some way I think this book is an attempt to do that."〔 The title was derived from a line from "The Nurse's Song" by English poet William Blake: "And all the hills echoed".〔 In January 2013, ''Publishers Weekly'' announced the publication date as May 21 of that year, and Riverhead Books released a statement that the novel was about "how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations". First printed in hardback, ''And the Mountains Echoed'' was priced at $28.95 in the United States and £14.99 in the United Kingdom. Hosseini went on a five-week tour to 41 cities across America to promote the book.〔 In October 2013, plans were confirmed to translate ''And the Mountains Echoed'' into 40 languages, among them Icelandic and Malay.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「And the Mountains Echoed」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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