The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg

And now it brings "The Kite Runner," a beautiful novel by Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini that ranks among the best-written and provocative stories of the year so far.

Hosseini's first novel -- and the first Afghan novel to be written originally in English -- "The Kite Runner" tells a heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between Amir, the son of a wealthy Afghan businessman, and Hassan, the son of his father's servant. Amir is Sunni; Hassan is Shi'a. One is born to a privileged class; the other to a loathed minority. One to a father of enormous presence; the other to a crippled man. One is a voracious reader; the other illiterate.

The poor Hassan is born with a hare lip, but Amir's gaps are better hidden, deep inside.

Yet Amir and Hassan live and play together, not simply as friends, but as brothers without mothers. Their intimate story traces across the expansive canvas of history, 40 years in Afghanistan's tragic evolution, like a kite under a gathering storm. The reader is blown from the last days of Kabul's monarchy -- salad days in which the boys lives' are occupied with school, welcome snows, American cowboy movies and neighborhood bullies -- into the atrocities of the Taliban, which turned the boys' green playing fields red with blood.

This unusually eloquent story is also about the fragile relationship fathers and sons, humans and their gods, men and their countries. Loyalty and blood are the ties that bind their stories into one of the most lyrical, moving and unexpected books of this year.

Hosseini's title refers to a traditional tournament for Afghan children in which kite-flyers compete by slicing through the strings of their opponents with their own razor-sharp, glass-encrusted strings. To be the child who wins the tournament by downing all the other kites -- and to be the "runner" who chases down the last losing kite as it flutters to earth -- is the greatest honor of all.

And in that metaphor of flyer and runner, Hosseini's story soars.

And fear not, gentle reader. This isn't a "foreign" book. Unlike Boris Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago," Hosseini's narrative resonates with familiar rhythms and accessible ideas, all in prose that equals or exceeds the typical American story form. While exotic Afghan customs and Farsi words pop up occasionally, they are so well-defined for the reader that the book is enlightening and fascinating, not at all tedious.

Nor is it a dialectic on Islam. Amir's beloved father, Baba, is the son of a wise judge who enjoys his whiskey, television, and the perks of capitalism. A moderate in heart and mind, Hosseini has little good to say about Islamic extremism.

"The Kite Runner" is a song in a new key. Hosseini is an exhilaratingly original writer with a gift for irony and a gentle, perceptive heart. His canvas might be a place and time Americans are only beginning to understand, but he paints his art on the page, where it is intimate and poignant.


Stunning, epic, extraordinary debut novel   October 9, 2003
Peggy Vincent (Oakland, CA)
72 out of 80 found this review helpful

I read 2-3 books a week, and this is without a doubt my favorite of this year. No, I'll go further: it's one of maybe 8-10 books I'd choose to take to a deserted isle. I've put The Kite Runner directly into the hands of perfect strangers in book stores and said, "Read this one."
In a nutshell, Amir, the son of a well-to-do Afghani , has a best friend, Hassan, who is the illiterate child of Amir's father's long-time servant. Both children are motherless. A horrific event, a secret kept, the loss of personal honor, and a lie come between the boys. From that rift, the story moves forward as Amir and his father emigrate to California, where Amir matures, marries, and becomes a successful writer, but is still plagued by those old sins and lies. Then comes a revelation of still one more long-held secret that sets Amir on a return trip to Afghanistan (now under the worst years of Taliban dominance) to rescue Hassan's child. Author Hosseini doesn't shy from one iota of unpleasantness, and the result is a book with a perfect narrative arc, a sterling story line, unforgettable characters, and and and and... I had the opportunity to meet the author very briefly (just to shake his hand and gush a bit about his extraordinary book) at Books by the Bay in San Francisco and am delighted to report that he is charming, approachable, and thoroughly engaging. He deserves all the accolades that are coming his way.
Buy The Kite Runner. Read it. Then go back to the store and buy 2 more signed 1st editions - one to keep as an investment and one to give to your best friend.
...what a fine book!


Afghanistan, The Taliban, and Family Love   May 21, 2004
prisrob (New EnglandUSA)
540 out of 638 found this review helpful

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini is one of those marvelous books that opens up our hearts and minds. This book puts a name and face to the people we are helping to free. This is a book at once so magnificent,it is difficult to comprehend and describe. How could we be fighting for freedom in this far off land, Afghanistan, and not understand the people; their heritage, their land and what they lost?

This book transports us to a very different time in the 1960's. Amir and Hassan, friends, raised in the same household, but in different worlds. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, and Hassan is the son of the servant, Hazara. There may be a difference in the lives they led, but they became fast friends. Amir would learn to read and Hassan would not. Amir would have the most beautiful toys and particularly kites, and Hassan would be able to help Amir play with the toys and run (fly) his kite. Amir was the spolied son, Hassan was the intelligent and intuitive servant's son. Their lives would intertwine even when separated.

When the Russian army invaded, Amir and his father fled to the United States, California. Amir grew up in a different land, but with the same Afghanistan culture. He and his father became close. Amir married, went to college, all the while wondering what happened to his childhood friend, the one he betrayed.

As time marched on, Amir lost his father to cancer and was summoned to Pakistan to meet with an old family friend. This turns out to be a life renewing event. Amir searches for news of his friend, Hassan. The search takes him back to Afghanistan, to an orphanage, a meeting with a member of the Taliban, a search for his lost city and culture and for a prize he will cherish, for the truth and for the life he regains.

This is a gritty book, the beauty and violence of this country, Afghanistan, comes to life. The customs and food and smells of the city; the desolation of life and the loss of the country to madmen who are running it with only their imagined vulgar needs and wealth in mind that destroys a culture so varied and rich.
We can imagine we are there, and we can share in the sights, the smells, the utter disregard for human life. But we can never know what these people have lost. A book, I will cherish, so will you. prisrob


Just Read It   December 14, 2005
Jeff T. Blevins
25 out of 26 found this review helpful

I was stopped in the elevator the other day, clutching this book, and a woman peeked at it and inquired how it was.
I said it was really good. (At the time I was a little over half way done with it.)
She followed her question with another; asking me, "What is that about again? I forgot."

I responded, quite succintly, that it's one person's perspective/experience of growing up and living in modern Afghanistan. She gave the polite, but not too terribly interested, "Oh. Yea. Thanks." And stepped out and on her way.

I thought to myself, "Wait. It's much more that that."
And so it is.
Let's be painfully honest here.
How much interest can a book about Afghanistan garner? (at least to Westerners)
Really.

When I first saw it at the airport here in Dallas, I overheard a person say to someone standing there, "Just read it."

Good advice.
Just read it.

You'll laugh, you'll cry.
You'll be upset and, at times, frustrated.
But most of all, you'll be taken away.
Do yourself a favor.


Just read it.




More of a response than a review   September 22, 2004
D. Smith (Washington, DC)
21 out of 22 found this review helpful

In regards to the previous review, I appreciate that as an Afghani, you have a level of understanding that others may not have. But I think you are misguided on your review. I don't necessarily disagree with you when you mention the numerous plot twists that occur near the end of the novel... they seem overly dramatic and often quite unrealistic. But I think you judge far too harshly, taking into consideration that this is Hosseini's first novel. And I for one cannot stand David Foster Wallace, so I suppose that it may be a matter of taste.

What 'The Kite Runner' is to me is a novel that allows outsiders a glimpse of recent history of a nation that they knew very little about. The television images now of a burnt out, impoverished city that was, not long ago, a place of far greater happiness and tranquility. How often are we able to hear the voice of an Afghani telling us what they think of the present state of Afghanistan... the destruction caused by the Taliban, and the consequences of their rule. I merely knew what Pakistani friend told me in 1997, when we were in prep school together. It didn't mean much then, but I think of it now quite often. "The Taliban, man," he said, "They mean business. They are some mean bast****."

I suppose hearing those words from someone with perspective means something more than hearing it from a talking head on CBS or FOX news. I felt the same sort of authenticity from Hosseini's novel... a small story that dealt with a scenario much larger. And without the moving story that unfolded within the pages, would we really have cared to learn more about this subject? It takes the humanity we feel when we begin to care about individual characters to summon the empathy we need to care about an entire people.