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Kite Runner Description
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In
his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very
few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational
and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while
also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs
resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does
this on his first try.
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.
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