Nabi confesses his guilt in facilitating the sale of Pari and describes the adoptive couple: his boss Suleiman, a gay man secretly in love with him, and his wife, Nila, a half-French poet who high-tails it to France with Pari after Suleiman has a stroke. Nabi’s own story comes next in a posthumous tell-all letter (creaky device) to Markos, the Greek plastic surgeon who occupies the Kabul house from 2002 onwards. The drama does nothing to prepare us for the coming leaps in time and place. Saboor’s brother-in-law Nabi is a cook/chauffeur for a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul he helps arrange the sale of Pari to the couple, breaking Abdullah’s heart. His first wife died giving birth to their daughter Pari, who’s now 4 and has been raised lovingly by her brother, 10-year-old Abdullah two peas in a pod, but “leftovers” in the eyes of Parwana, Saboor’s second wife. Saboor is a dirt-poor day laborer in a village two days walk from Kabul. After two stellar novels set (mostly) in Kabul, Afghanistan, Hosseini’s third tacks among Afghanistan, California, France and Greece to explore the effect of the Afghan diaspora on identity.
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