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The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner

Author(s): Khaled Hosseini

Location(s): Kabul, San Francisco

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1980s to 2000s

Location

Content

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.

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Book Reviews

Lead Review

‘The shattering first novel by Khaled Hosseini… a rich and soul-searching narrative … a sharp, unforgettable taste of the trauma and tumult experienced by Afghanis as their country buckled’ (Observer )

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Incredible book! I loved it.

Author: Charl

This is such beautiful book. I really enjoyed (although in parts it’s very sad) reading this book. It’s amazingly written and so evocative of Afghanistan. I would thoroughly recommend this book to everyone!

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A must read

Author: Mariasole

I avoided this book for ages as I read too many reviewes on it and I thought it was going to be the usual “too good to be true” kind of bestseller. But this...

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This book made me feel angry about what is happening in Afganistan

This book made me feel angry about what is happening in Afganistan but very pleased I read it. If a book provokes such emotion it must be good.

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Wow

For the average European person this book is full of “OTHER” values, in the end it is a very moving account of the friendship of two boys from different backgrounds, woven in a complicated...

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The Kite Runner

I really enjoyed this book. The story was compelling and kept me interested. The stories of growing up in a pre-war Afghanistan were beautifully written and certainly made you feel sad for what’s been...

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