The Kite Runner

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Summary: So Much Rolled Into One
Review: The Kite Runner is a masterfully written tale that will appeal to and more than please a very wide range of readers. It is a powerful work of ethnic literary fiction, giving a glimpse into a culture that goes far beyond the headlines in which it has been imprisoned of late. It is the poignantly familiar story of the immigrant experience, touching on issues that every American who can claim birth in another land will relate to and recognize. It is a story that races through the spectrum of what being human is, from the ugliness of self-service to the beauty of sacrifice for others. It is a compulsive page-turner, guaranteed to keep readers awake long into the night, a thriller with plenty of dramatic shock and awe and action padded through beautifully composed prose.
It deserves every bit and more of the attention it has received so far in publications like USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Entertainment Weekly.
You want a thought-provoking read? Read The Kite Runner.

You want a story that moves you to tears? Read The Kite Runner.
You want to be entertained? Read The Kite Runner.

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Summary: Youthful hubris yields an unexpected legacy
Review: This is an extraordinary and important first novel from a former citizen of Afghanistan. The story addresses decades long upheavals in the world, particularly the Middle East. The harsh lessons of war prevail as a fascinating country, rich with history and tradition, is decimated by years of invasion, internecine war, religious intolerance and a rigid class system. As well, there is the theme of parent and child, in this case father and son, the importance of that primary relationship in determining the future of a child.

As a young boy, Amir leads a sheltered life, one of privilege and luxury, surrounded by learning and culture. As the son of an upper class Pashtun, Amir has a constant playmate in Hassan, son of his father's Hazara servant of many years. Each winter the boys compete in the popular sport of kite running, Hassan's daunting agility adding to their success. As a Hazara, Hassan has no importance as a person and is in imminent danger when threatened by a local bully. Amir has the opportunity to intervene, but in his arrogance, he hides behind the superiority of class, betraying his companion. Amir's extemporaneous decision will define the inner dialog of his entire adult life.

Immigrating to America with his father just before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Amir does everything in his power to make his Baba proud. It seems his Baba cannot be pleased, requiring much of his only son. But, as the years pass, father and son reach a place of mutual understanding and respect. Later, when the Taliban is in power, an old family friend contacts Amir, offering a second opportunity at redemption. Having spent most of his life consumed by shame and regret, Amir recognizes the very real implications of his decision so long ago. His internal struggle is the underlying theme of the novel, which spans Afghan history from the peaceful 70's to the repressive rule of the Taliban in the late 90's.

The desperate battle to preserve the cultural heritage of Afghanistan spans Amir's life in Kabul and America, played out upon the world stage. Amir and his father have lived safely in America while their homeland is decimated by constant warfare. After years of chaos, the streets of Afghanistan are lined with beggars, fatherless children whose future is marginalized by poverty. "There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood."

The sweet simplicity of youthful winters spent "kite running" with Hassan, seem light years away, illuminated in retrospect by the boys' unfettered innocence. Returning to Afghanistan as a grown man, Amir is challenged as never before, charged with the protection of a young life already scarred by the random violence that is visited upon the disenfranchised. With inordinate compassion Hosseini soulfully portrays Amir's impossible dilemma, where salvation lies in his potential for human kindness towards the less fortunate. Given another opportunity to heal the terrible wounds inflicted by personal choice, Amir's potential for compassion is renewed. He begins to understand the power of forgiveness, when the impossible becomes possible. Suddenly, the wild joy of two young boys' soaring kites against a winter sky is an everyday miracle. Luan Gaines/2003.

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Summary: Afganistan discovered
Review: The Kite Runner is a excellent novel. It tells us about the people and customs of Afganistan. You can see what Kabul appeared as before and after the Taliban's rise to power. The main character is interesting in that he is not a hero but somewhat a coward. The interaction between father and son is very thought provoking. What man has not wanted to please his father and felt at times that he has failed.
The novel keeps your interest throughout. Hard to put the book down.

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Summary: A Remarkable Story of Adventure, Betrayal and Redemption
Review: This remarkable book explores the themes of loyalty, betrayal and redemption in an engrossing story of a childhood friendship that affects three generations of intertwining Afghani families. The book centres on two children: the first the son of a prosperous Kabul businessman, the second the son of his longtime servant. The two boys grow up together -- constant companions despite their differences -- and become fast friends. But an ugly event leads to an act of cowardice and ultimately to a betreyal that ruptures the relationship. But, as the narrator says, "it's wrong what they say about the past, ... about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out." It does indeed, and the narrator, now an adult, is summoned from a comfortable life in San Francisco by a telephone call from Kabul with a request that he cannot in conscience ignore. This leads the narrator to undertake a dangerous quest into Taliban-held Afghanistan to recover a lost child and to redeem his honour. The book manages to combine a tale of high adventure with an engrossing portrait of childhood friendship and familial ties, wrapped up with a profound exploration of the nature of love and the need for repemption. Altogether, a stunning, moving, highly memorable novel.

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Summary: Familiar Theme New Perspective
Review: Kahled Hosseini has made his debut as a novelist with, "The Kite Runner", and it is an appearance that is worth noting. The story that he tells and the characters that inhabit his tale are some that are likely quite familiar to you. Children who are friends yet separated by society's values, wealth, or religion are not necessarily unique, however; Mr. Hosseini brings readers to Afghanistan, to this nation before and during the Russian invasion through to the appearance of The Northern Alliance and finally the Taliban.

This is not the view we are often exposed to with the lines drawn simply between East and West, demarcations broadly defined between Christianity and Islam. These are not the shallow glimpses that are convenient to news organizations. The author brings you to the Islamic life that is divided dramatically between Sunni and Shia, Pashtun and Hazara. The primary characters occupying opposing sides are two young boys, one the son of a wealthy merchant, the other a servant of the same merchant's household. They are at once best friends while living with barriers each knows cannot be crossed.

This book takes some patience, a bit of time to grow accustomed to some language that is unfamiliar to the western ear even as the author presents his tale in solid unadorned prose. This is a story about character, truth, and the ease with which both can be amended and rationalized. It's about redemption and its pursuit; it is about profound regret and inaction. Perception can create the view that differences between societal beliefs are tremendous are cannot be reconciled. The truth is often different and the author portrays fathers, sons and mothers that share the same wishes and disappointments that all families face, endure, and survive.

The horrors and persecution are also universal whether an individual keeps his eyes averted from the Taliban, minions of Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia or the dark days of Jim Crow in this country. The author himself is an émigré of the country he writes about and so the reader can expect that what one is exposed to in the nation's customs, prejudices and History are accurate. This is a nation that many books have viewed fictionally as settings for thrillers and now with, "The Kite Runner", has been presented as fiction, albeit a very personal and more literary one.

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Summary: Excellent! Excellent! Excellent
Review: This book was wonderful. I was hooked from the beginning and couldn't put it down. I feel as though I know the characters personally and I suffered through their dilemmas with them. This author is truly talented. Hard to believe this is his first novel. Thank you for this gift. I'll never forget this book.

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Summary: A HEARTFELT STORY AND READING
Review: Khaled Hosseini has gifted us with an electrifying and unforgettable first novel. His reading of it is more than eloquent.

"The Kite Runner" is, over and above all, a penetrating story of friendship. Amir, the narrator, is the son of a wealthy Kabul man, a person of importance. On the other hand, Hassan is the son of Amir's father's servant, and a member of a disdained minority. The two boys grow up together in the same household, within the same walls yet destined to be worlds apart.

Amir and his father will eventually flee Afghanistan and find refuge in California. Despite his safe haven Amir cannot forget Hassan, the friend he left behind. When he learns that Hassan and his wife have been slain by the Taliban, Amir wonders about the fate of the couple's son. He returns to his native land.

Despite the destruction and heinous crimes one still finds rays of hope in this heartfelt story.

- Gail Cooke

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Summary: Your heart will soar
Review: The earth turns and the wind blows and sometimes some marvelous scrap of paper is blown against the fence for us to find. And once found, we become aware there are places out there that are both foreign and familiar. Funny what the wind brings.

And now it brings "The Kite Runner," a beautiful novel by Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini that ranks among the best-written and provocative stories of the year so far.

Hosseini's first novel -- and the first Afghan novel to be written originally in English -- "The Kite Runner" tells a heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between Amir, the son of a wealthy Afghan businessman, and Hassan, the son of his father's servant. Amir is Sunni; Hassan is Shi'a. One is born to a privileged class; the other to a loathed minority. One to a father of enormous presence; the other to a crippled man. One is a voracious reader; the other illiterate.

The poor Hassan is born with a hare lip, but Amir's gaps are better hidden, deep inside.

Yet Amir and Hassan live and play together, not simply as friends, but as brothers without mothers. Their intimate story traces across the expansive canvas of history, 40 years in Afghanistan's tragic evolution, like a kite under a gathering storm. The reader is blown from the last days of Kabul's monarchy -- salad days in which the boys lives' are occupied with school, welcome snows, American cowboy movies and neighborhood bullies -- into the atrocities of the Taliban, which turned the boys' green playing fields red with blood.

This unusually eloquent story is also about the fragile relationship fathers and sons, humans and their gods, men and their countries. Loyalty and blood are the ties that bind their stories into one of the most lyrical, moving and unexpected books of this year.

Hosseini's title refers to a traditional tournament for Afghan children in which kite-flyers compete by slicing through the strings of their opponents with their own razor-sharp, glass-encrusted strings. To be the child who wins the tournament by downing all the other kites -- and to be the "runner" who chases down the last losing kite as it flutters to earth -- is the greatest honor of all.

And in that metaphor of flyer and runner, Hosseini's story soars.

And fear not, gentle reader. This isn't a "foreign" book. Unlike Boris Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago," Hosseini's narrative resonates with familiar rhythms and accessible ideas, all in prose that equals or exceeds the typical American story form. While exotic Afghan customs and Farsi words pop up occasionally, they are so well-defined for the reader that the book is enlightening and fascinating, not at all tedious.

Nor is it a dialectic on Islam. Amir's beloved father, Baba, is the son of a wise judge who enjoys his whiskey, television, and the perks of capitalism. A moderate in heart and mind, Hosseini has little good to say about Islamic extremism.

"The Kite Runner" is a song in a new key. Hosseini is an exhilaratingly original writer with a gift for irony and a gentle, perceptive heart. His canvas might be a place and time Americans are only beginning to understand, but he paints his art on the page, where it is intimate and poignant.

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Summary: Do not miss this book
Review: Very few books have moved me like The Kite Runner - it is a gripping and finely crafted novel, deserving of every ounce of praise received so far. This novel is heartbreaking, yet hopeful, and emotional riveting - at times I swelled with happiness and a page later I fought back tears.
An important book that follows Afghanistan through it's many facades in the past 3 decades, full of great historical context and detail, giving insight to a country that we only know from the Soviet occupation in the 80s and the Taliban after that - a country that before these regimes, was beautiful and full of promise and prosperity.
This is a book not soon to leave my memory - buy it and read it immediately. It is refreshing in it's uniqueness and gripping in it's beautiful voice. An absolute achievement for a debut novel - let's hope this is only the beginning for Khaled Hosseini.

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Summary: Not to be missed
Review: This book is mesmerizing from start to finish. It is the type of book you will not want to put down. This means staying up late or squeezing it in on your lunch hour. Do not miss it.