Edmund Burke once told the British Parliament that fiction lags after truth. He said so while trying to make members sympathize with discontented American colonists in 1775. Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini tweaks Burke's aphorism: he sees fiction as a series of lies that hopefully lead to something truthful. His novels--The Kite Runner (2003) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), which have sold a combined 38 million copies worldwide--have helped countless readers better understand a discontented Afghanistan.
Hosseini's latest book, And the Mountains Echoed (Riverhead Books; 404 pages), follows the lives of characters who are touched by a father's tortured decision on...