The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner

Book

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini ☻☻☻☻☺

Review by Sharon Miller

They say timing is everything, and in the case of Khaled Hosseini’s much acclaimed book, they are right. Following the life of Amir, as he grows up in the 1970’s in Kabul, Afghanistan, gets forced out of his home country when the Russians invade in the 1980’s and then returns to redeem himself during the Taliban rule of the 1990’s and 2000’s, Hosseini provides an eager audience with the details of a country that the whole world was suddenly interested in. First published in 2003, a mere two years after the World Trade Center attacks, a mere two years after Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, a mere two years after the whole of the United States became unwittingly aware of the small middle eastern country, The Kite Runner allows the average person a glimpse into Afghani life, both before the governmental upheavals and after.

The story is written in first person through the eyes of Amir and begins in modern-day America when Amir receives an ominous phone call offering him the “chance to be good again.” Already, the reader understands that this book is about Amir’s fall from grace, and his own personal redemption, now, all the reader must do is sit back and wait.

The story quickly flashes back to 1970’s Kabul, when Amir is a young boy of thirteen. During this section of the book, Hosseini does a great job of describing life in Afghanistan before the Russians took over. He details a place where life was pretty good, as long as your father was rich and powerful and you were not a Hazara. In fact, it seems that Amir and his live in servant, Hassan, (a Hazara) live a fairly carefree life. However, due to the first chapter of the book, the reader cannot help but carry a sense of impending doom, looking at each event as the fateful fall from grace. When that event finally does happen, Hosseini describes it and its aftermath in such a way that is hard to not despise Amir. The way Amir allows his feelings of guilt to destroy his family and the families of those around him is enough to make your stomach turn. Strangely, the way Hosseini describes the sequence of events; it almost seems that Amir’s fall from grace is in direct correlation with Afghanistan’s fall as well. It is difficult to not think back in your own life and remember certain catastrophic events that seemingly changed your life and wonder how life would be different if you had just made a different choice. And so it is with Amir. For the better part of the rest of the book, Amir questions how life would be different and how he can cleanse himself of his despicable acts, all the while, the reader knows his time will come.

Of course, the time for redemption finally does come and you realize it is what you have been waiting for. This is the time when the reader gets to journey back to modern day Afghanistan, the Afghanistan we love to hate. Hosseini takes you on a ride through an Afghanistan ravaged by decades of war, past the lives of poor devoted Muslims who are cruelly oppressed by the Taliban, and into the horrific daily activities of that ruling class. And when the moment of redemption looms in front of you and Amir must stare into the eyes of the demons of his past, the novel grips your heart and soul in a vice and you find yourself rooting for the person whom only a few pages before you despised.

With The Kite Runner, Hosseini takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of emotions. In this gripping novel, he succeeds in instilling anger, sadness, hope and joy in the reader, all while providing an uninhibited look into Afghanistan, then and now.