Been reading too many books about Afghanistan? No you haven't, not until you've read this one. This is the difficult third novel from Hosseini, who, of course, had a massive success with his first novel The Kite Runner in 2003, then followed that up with the equally successful A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2007. We all wondered what he would do next. Could he keep readers interested in Afghanistan in the face of many, many imitations in the years since The Kite Runner triggered so much interest in the region? Could he keep up the quality of storytelling, the emotional engagement, the characters we remember and believe in? Well, he's pulled it off. This is an epic novel, telling the story of a large number of interlinked characters over many years, set largely in Afghanistan, but also in Paris, Greece, San Francisco, spanning the years from 1949 to 2010. There are flashbacks and flashforwards, third person narrators and first person narrators, diary extracts, and pieces of interviews. The book is quite a technical achievement, but the mechanics of the book don't ever overwhelm the power of the narrative; the story wins out, and it's a hell of a story. It's impossible to describe the story without giving away spoilers; suffice to say Hosseini's usual themes are here - it's about loss, the legacy of violence and poverty, the struggle of women in fundamentalist societies, and love. Read it.