Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Joanna Trollope, Books of the Year, The Observer
'My top fiction book of the year ... marvellous'

Literary Review
'Beautifully nuanced, and the moment of Amir's ultimate betrayal is genuinely shocking. It is a passionate story'

Customer Reviews

The Kite Runner
Too easy to read, too easy to generalise. The five stars are for a fantastic read that gives a person some insight. And I am getting started with 'Thousand Suns' on the strength of it.

But don't believe everything you read. But it will, or it did make me, cry.

Powerful story, beautifully written
Beware, this is the kind of book that will make you miss your stop.

The story is set in Afghanistan in the 1970's. It is told by Amir, the main character. He lives in Kabul with his father, a popular and influential man. Amir is a timid and sensitive little boy who loves books and making up stories. He never stands up for himself against the neighbourhood bullies. Luckily his best friend and devoted servant Hassan is always there to defend him. Amir is a bit of a disappointment to his father and he desperately seeks for a way to win his heart. The annual kite-fighting tournament presents an opportunity. As always, he has the help of Hassan.

And then Amir betrays Hassan. At least that is how Amir sees it. It is likely that the reader would feel that Amir is not to blame. He was too young. But as much as you'd like to, you cannot step inside the book and rescue either of the two little boys. You can only be a helpless witness to the tragedy that unfolds.

Thus is a powerful story, beautifully written.

Huge themes are covered in this book: loyalty and betrayal, privilege and injustice, cowardice and bravery, love and evil, guilt and redemption.

I avoided this book for quite a while because I was afraid of the pain of reading about Afghanistan. That was a mistake. Even though at one point there was such a weight on my chest that I was struggling to breathe, that I thought my heart would break, I am glad that I did not miss out on this book. I am so grateful to the friend who pestered me until I read it.

A different world
Wealthy Afghan boy Amir lives in Kabul with his father whose approval he is desperate to gain. His close friend Hassan is the son of his father's servant and lives in a hut on the property of Amir's father. Hassan has a hare lip and is illiterate, but possesses skills that Amir does not, and of which Amir is jealous. Amir sets out to prove to his father that he has the makings of a man, his ambition to win a kite flying contest held annually in Kabul. Hassan will be his runner, and capture their rival's kite. However, on the day of the contest, something happens to Hassan that will change the relationship between him and Amir beyond recovery. Not long after this, the Russians invade the country and Amir and his father flee to America. Hassan remains behind. Yeas later, Amir receives a communication that sends him back to Afghanistan, now ruled by the Taliban, to retrace the past and find redemption if he can.
I enjoyed the novel very much. It kept me reading until late at night and turning the pages. Some things fell into place a little too smoothly or were decided cliches and cop-outs. The Nazi bad boy for example whose parents lived in Australia. Thus the confrontation between him and Amir wasn't an indigenous one so to speak.
The characters of Amir and Hassan are finely, thoughtfully and vividly drawn. It was also an interesting insight into aspects of a culture I know little about. As to the twist....I got it more or less straight away, so it came as no surprise, but then perhaps it wasn't meant to.
All in all an enjoyable, entertaining and thought provoking read that I can thoroughly recommend. Nine out of ten from me, equating to four and a half stars, rounded up to five.