The author attempts another form of telling this story in this work, with separate stories across the time spanned by the whole centred on various characters and woven together by the common thread of the narrative. So one gets a deeper understanding of each one, for the duration, and a comprehensive one of the whole.
In his previous works too the author has made one aware that terrible doings are not necessarily patented by any one particular sect or organisation, and instead are rather a part of human characters that some choose to succumb to or indulge in while others stay clear of or rise above. In this one too, while he does not refrain from mentioning the atrocities by various politico-terror organisations, he brings out horrors perpetrated by people for private reasons that are as mundane as division of property within the family and clan, or stealing property that belongs to someone now poor and in need of it.
The stories take one across the world with the characters forced to or choosing to travel, migrate and take refuge in various countries for various reasons, usually seeking to find peace that they can live and prosper in. There is cultural diversity therefore, and a kaleidoscopic change of shifting patterns as people from Afghanistan, France, Greece and US move back and forth across, bringing their own cultures and languages and meeting others of diverse backgrounds.
And of course he depicts goodness and nobility of human characters, but not in expected ways or places, rather more in a variety of ways small and large. Often good comes accidentally to someone despite it being not quite clear that such was the intention, for an obvious example when a woman of mixed French and Afghan background who is rendered incapable of bearing her own children - due to some medical procedure she underwent early - adopts a little Afghan girl from a poor family, and eventually takes her to France to live in an attempt to survive. Whatever the loss the girl suffers of her family and connections, it is obvious it is good for her not only for survival but blossoming of a life and mind that would have been unthinkable back home with her family had she not been taken away.
One rather wishes the story would go on and fill gaps left about various characters, and go further, the way one wishes a just finished cup of coffee or tea would continue for a while longer. Perhaps the author would do so at that and tell us what happened to everyone. And this is the success of his work.
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In an amazing detail he makes the little Afghan girl of poor farmer family adopted and brought to France to grow up to not only choose Mathematics for her studies but do well enough to go on to be on faculty in Paris and retire only for reasons of health, and have a good life with a family meanwhile with a French husband and three children of her own to boot, with grandchildren galore yet. And the details mentioned of her work in Mathematics are meticulously done so it is not ridiculous either.
It takes someone with some familiarity of the world of science and of western social life to know what a miracle he has painted so very casually. Not because this woman is of another culture, another race, but simply because she is a woman, and west does not tolerate women with careers without penalty of family and peace of mind in any field, even fashion that one would think would be a womens' own field, much less science which is seen as male club and Mathematics which is the very central ivory tower therein.
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