Sunday, September 21, 2008

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
http://www.khaledhosseini.com/

From the website:
Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan nonetheless grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara, member of a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade and Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of their lies. Written against a history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But with the devastation, Khaled Hosseini also gives us hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows for redemption.


When I started this book I was expecting to be immediately sucked in… It didn’t quite happen that way, but somehow within 24 hours I had finished this story… This book was sitting on my book shelf for many many months before I decided to take it away with me... I wanted to read this before seeing the film, and was especially interested in the account of the situation in Afghanistan... The characters were depressingly real at times, my heart broke as the story took shape… Luckily it is a story of redemption which is what kept me reading… I thoroughly enjoyed this story and it swirled around my head on the flight home, which is what makes a great story to me...

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