From Roots to Routes

Diasporic Sensibility in And the Mountains Echoed

Abstract

In this article I argue that the characters in Khaled
Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed reflect a unique diasporic
sensibility: concurrently divided between desires for reclaiming Afghan
roots and of exploring alternative routes to reach out their lost roots. I
discuss the novel And the Mountains Echoed from the theoretical lens of
discourse on diaspora, mainly by the diaspora theorists Stuart Hall and
Edward Said. The characters in Hosseini’s novel return to their ancestral
homeland, both imaginatively and literally. For this two-fold journey they
take manifold routes in order to restore and renew their ties with their
Afghan roots. Thus the expatriates exhibit the perennial predicament of a
diasporic subject straddling between the vulnerable guide-posts of home
and exile. Their homecoming only makes them realize the impossibility to
return. When the characters in the novel realize impossibility of return,
the certainties of roots are replaced with the transnational contingencies
of routes.