Complex tale told with great narrative facility

There is a bland, almost corporate flavor to the title of Khaled Hosseini's third book, suggesting a large but windy Afghan epic. Its narrative wares are clearly advertised in the book-jacket blurb to reassure his tens of millions of worldwide readers that they will be getting the brand they want.

This effectively marketed product informs its consumers that, as there was in "The Kite Runner," here there will also be siblings separated by hardship and tragedy. There will be nostalgia for old Afghanistan, ironized by its clashes with Western freedoms and shattered by modern wars; there will be leaps in time, speaking of the cruel tricks of history through wildly emotive tales of loss, betrayal and redemption.