Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Revisiting The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

My Rating: 10/10
It has been one of my favorite books I ever read. The poignant details of life in Afghanistan post 1970’s, the stark difference between lives of Pashtuns and Hazaras makes it a rich, heart-touching story. Here’s what it is about:

Twelve-year-olds Amir and Hassan are inseparable companions, raised in the same house, nurtured by the same wet nurse, ardent fans of the same stories and games. The only minor difference between them is that Hassan gets up several hours earlier in the morning, to clean the kitchen, light the fire, iron the school uniform and prepare a breakfast for his worthy master Amir, the son of a wealthy Pashtun merchant.

It's Afghanistan in the 1970s; the function of the Pashtuns is to be in charge, the function of the Hazaras (a shunned ethnic minority) is to clean the bathrooms of their betters. This is one reason that Amir is unwilling to think of Hassan as his best friend rather than his adoring servant, and another is that his own father, so powerfully remote from the awkward, poetic Amir, is so disgustingly fond of the capable, athletic Hassan. Faced with the prospect of defending Hassan from the neighborhood gang of teen psychos, Amir chooses a kite over a friend, a decision that will haunt him for the next quarter of a century--until that day when he returns from America to address the question of Hassan and Afghanistan once again. As a personal story of a lost friendship that defines three lives, as an insider's story of Afghanistan's bloody path through the late twentieth century, and as an immigrant's story of a desperate sacrifice for a second chance, The Kite Runner would make a marvelous choice for students of high school or college, or for adult book group members of any age around the globe.

Hosseini is the first native Afghan to publish a major novel in English, just as Amir is the first protagonist in American literature to confront a personal nemesis who also happens to be a member of a little group they call the Taliban.

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