A fascinating, if somewhat rambling, epic centering around the life of one extended family from a small village outside of Kabul, spanning six decades of Afghan history. I thought the characters and storylines were wonderful, the imagery sharp if a bit localized. But the main downside (and it’s a big one in my view) is that each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view, with a different narrative voice. While I think that’s an interesting and worthwhile challenge, I don’t think it works too well; the result is a rather disjointed, fragmented narrative that is sometimes simply a pain to follow. There are no interesting dramatic surprises either, not really - the things we expect to happen do, and the developments that weren’t exactly obvious are not surprising, either. By and large events just happen, and we observe them in passing, which is a little odd. All that said - I found some of the parallels between the character’s lives, most obviously the two Pari women but also Timur/Idris and Markos/Thalia - to be quite well drawn. This book is a bit of a departure from A Thousand Splendid Suns, both in structure and tone, but if you can get into it, it’s quite worthwhile.