The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.

Narrated by Amir, a 40-year-old novelist living in California, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.

The son of an Afghan diplomat whose family received political asylum in the United States in 1980, Hosseini combines the unflinching realism of a war correspondent with the satisfying emotional pull of master storytellers such as Rohinton Mistry. Like the kite that is its central image, the story line of this mesmerizing first novel occasionally dips and seems almost to dive to the ground. But Hosseini ultimately keeps everything airborne until his heartrending conclusion in an American picnic park. --Lisa Alward, Amazon.ca

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what an amazing tale... - Rated
I instantly fell in love with the characters and was deeply moved by the story. I usually read on the train and did not expect to cry my eyes out with this one; but I did.

A tear jerker - Rated
A very emotionally charged book. Enjoyed and hated at the same time. Well worth a read

Run and get the Kite! - Rated
Here's a book everyone should read. No exception. Please do so.

I was totally taken by this book, cried a couple of times whilst reading it and even sometime after i had finished it i still remembered the characters so well. Haunting but oh so worth it!

A must have in you own private collection of books, even if its a small one.

I have also read 1000 splendid suns. top book too! waiting for Khaled's next book... please hurry!!!

Boring US part of the book - Rated
Good, exciting first half of the book. The plot disappoints around the time Baba dies. Surely there's more to come, but I'm afraid I'm not going to plough through the poorly edited middle of the book to get to the better end I'm afraid. Quite disappointed overall.

Why is this book so popular?

A Puzzling Oddity - Rated
It's hard to imagine how someone could call saccharine a book that contains genocide, adultery, pedophilia, rape, and any number of other atrocities, but there you have it, if this book has one quality it is its ability to somehow render all of these actions in a sentimental light. It is an amazing feat, if albeit an unintentional one.

From the get-go this book had rubbed me the wrong way for some reason I couldn't quite place. I'm not squeamish, I don't flinch from gritty renditions, I enjoy having my boundaries of belief, outrage and moral standing pushed to the edges if for no other reason than to see where I stand with myself, but this book didn't do it. I'd turn every page not sure of why I had this uneasy feeling that everything was too sweet. In the end, I think it comes from the over-riding feeling (spoiler alert) that no matter what, everything will be all right in the end. It doesn't matter than someone gets raped, that a boy loses his family, that a race gets massacred, because this ham-fisted novel has assured us that all of these events are only there for no other reason than to aid the main character in finding redemption.

The book is most comfortable when it is taking its sentimental journey through Afghanistan of the 1970s, both lamenting and rejoicing a lost youth, something anyone lucky enough to have experienced a childhood will identify with. Its when the plot ramps into gear that the book rapidly finds itself out of its depth, struggling to cope with the severity of the situations it wishes to deal with.