The Kite Runner

Hosseini, Khaled

ISBN 10: 1417640391 ISBN 13: 9781417640393

Publisher: Turtleback, 2004

Synopsis

For use in schools and libraries only. Traces the unlikely friendship of Amir, a wealthy Afghanistani youth, and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of the nation's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. Reader's Guide available.

About this title

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

Review:

'Hosseini's ability to reach the core of
experiences of love and loss places him in the company of such fine chroniclers of the new America as Chang-rae Lee. The Kite Runner is a first novel of unusual generosity, honesty and compassion'

'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'

'A devastating, masterful and painfully honest story ... it is a novel of great hidden intricacy and wisdom, like a timeless Eastern tale. It speaks the most harrowing truth about the power of evil'

'Unforgettable ... extraordinary. It is so powerful that for a long time after everything I read seemed bland'

About this edition

• Publisher: Turtleback
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1417640391
• ISBN 13: 9781417640393
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 400