Most helpful customer reviews
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life is not a coincidence, May 25 2006
THE KITE RUNNER is one of the few books that I've bought several copies of---just to give away to friends. It is truly a harrowing yet touching tale. Recreating the day-to-day existence of Amir and his father (Baba), a successful merchant in Kabul in the 1970's, Hosseini creates a warm and emotionally involving story of childhood, its traumas, and the importance of family in THE KITE RUNNER. Telling of two families--Amir and his father, and Hassan and Ali, their servants--he depicts two different worlds. Amir and Baba are Pashtuns, while Hassan and Ali are Hazaras, descendants of the Moguls who are also Shi'a Muslims, and it is in these parallel tracks that we come to see the variety of life in Afghanistan, its mores, traditions, and its hierarchies. Best friends, the boys grow up together, though Hassan, the servant, bears the burden of being different in appearance, both because of his Mogul heritage and because of his unrepaired hair-lip. When the boys are twelve, Hassan is beaten and severely injured by bullies, while Amir, who witnesses the attack, runs away in fear. Burdened by guilt and jealous of the close relationship between his father and Hassan and Ali, Amir manipulates their dismissal. Six years later, after a Communist coup, Amir and his father escape to the United States, where, away from the roles demanded of them in Kabul, they are on a more equal footing and come to new understandings. When Amir gets a phone call from his father's former business partner, twenty years later, he returns to Afghanistan to put his betrayal of Hassan to rights and "be good again." THE KITE RUNNER is a lesson in how we're all connected, or can be if we only look. Must also highly recommend the book BARK OF THE DOGWOOD which is just as well written and compelling. Good stuff, these books.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Run with it, Dec 30 2004
I don't want to tell too much and ruin this book for anyone. It's such a moving book, emotional and reads so biographical as you feel this MUST have happened to SOMEONE and it has, many times over. Amir must deal with the changing face of Afghanistan as he works on this mission, he must face the Taliban and make right what he as a child did wrong. The ending is NOT predictable and it's not happily ever after. It's a bittersweet, realistic ending that leaves one wanting to know more. I know I did. I realized too, in shame, how little I really knew about Afghanistan. How little they taught us in school and I understand so much more now, yet I know not enough. There's a huge cultural divide out there and this book, while fiction, helps bridge that gap for a few hundred pages. This is a first novel for Khaled Hosseini but it certainly does NOT read like one. It's moving and graphic and disturbing in all the right parts, oddly enough. It made me think and sob with what humans are capable of doing for one another and to one another on many fronts, both personal and societal.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fly away, Oct 29 2004
THE KITE RUNNER is written with such startling realism that I can't help but think it is largely autobiographical. The settings of both Amir's childhood in Kabul and his adult life in the Bay Area are lovingly written with such clarity that I almost believe that I could go over the hill to Fremont and meet the very people described in the book. Books like this one are the entire reason I read. Hundreds of books can be read and enjoyed but then you stumble across one like THE KITE RUNNER and you don't want it to end and the next bunch of books you read pale in comparison. THE KITE RUNNER is a beautiful story, beautifully written. While reading it is difficult not to sit and weep for Afghanistan and her people. I cannot recommend this wonderful book highly enough. It is one of the best novels I have read so far this year. The only other book that came close was THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD and that one has many funny elements to it. The writing style of "RUNNER" is sparse and simple, yet it packs an emotional wallop. I could smell the kabobs sizzling on the grill, see the kites soaring and battling in the crisp winter sky, and feel the despair of the Afghani people over the loss of their old way of life due to war and oppression. The story is almost allegorical in its universal truths of love, friendship, betrayal, and redemption. Not only does it bring to life the turmoil and hardships that Afghanistan has faced, but also it sheds light on the culture and nature of the people behind the news stories.
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