Zohre Ramin - Faculty Member, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tehran University
Farshad Farhang - PhD Student, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tehran University

References to fate, explicit, or implicit, are prevalent in Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed. Identifying alternative meanings of alienation, defined by Melvin Seeman, with possible variations of fate, this paper seeks to accomplish three tasks: first, to examine the narrative structure of the novel and its features in order to locate the significance of this work in relation to the author’s earlier novels, and second, to look at the implication of fate as the primary motif of the novel especially in relation to the tumultuous socio-political situation governing the Afghan recent history of the last sixty years. Asserting that the novel is marked by a conspicuous absence of any mention of Taliban or any other socio-political movement, this paper also examines the implication of this absence as a corollary to its discussion of fate. The aim here is not to have a philosophical discussion on the subject of fate but rather to see how it is treated and worked into the fabric of the novel by the author.

fate, alienation, narrative structure, Afghanistan, absence, socio-political forces