The Kite Runner
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Amir and Hassan are childhood friends in the alleys and orchards of Kabul in the sunny days before the invasion of the Soviet army and Afghanistan’s decent into fanaticism. Both motherless, they grow up as close as brothers, but their fates, they know, are to be different. Amir’s father is a wealthy merchant; Hassan’s father is his manservant. Amir belongs to the ruling caste of Pashtuns, Hassan to the despised Hazaras.
This fragile idyll is broken by the mounting ethnic, religious, and political tensions that begin to tear Afghanistan apart. An unspeakable assault on Hassan by a gang of local boys tears the friends apart; Amir has witnessed his friend’s torment, but is too afraid to intercede. Plunged into self-loathing, Amir conspires to have Hassan and his father turned out of the household.
When the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father flee to San Francisco, leaving Hassan and his father to a pitiless fate. Only years later will Amir have an opportunity to redeem himself by returning to Afghanistan to begin to repay the debt long owed to the man who should have been his brother.
Compelling, heartrending, and etched with details of a history never before told in fiction, The Kite Runner is a story of the ways in which we’re damned by our moral failures, and of the extravagant cost of redemption.
About this Author
KHALED HOSSEINI is one of the most widely read and beloved authors in the world. His New York Times bestselling novels The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed have sold more than fifty-five million copies worldwide. Hosseini is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the founder of the Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lives in northern California.
Reviews
"A wonderful work. . . . This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years. All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, honor, guilt, fear redemption. . . . It is so powerful that for a long time everything I read after seemed bland." --Isabel Allende
"Stunning . . . an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history. . . . It is rare that a book is at once so timely and of such high literary quality." --Publishers Weekly
"In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence--forces that continue to threaten them even today." --New York Times
"A haunting morality tale." --USA Today
"His passionate story of betrayal and redemption is framed by Afghanistan's tragic recent past . . . Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture too: irresistible." --Kirkus Reviews
"Like Gone with the Wind, this extraordinary first novel locates the personal struggles of everyday people in the terrible sweep of history." --People
"To many Western readers, [Afghanistan's] can be an exhausting and bewildering history. But Hosseini extrudes it into an intimate account of family and friendship, betrayal and salvation that requires no atlas or translation to engage and enlighten us." --Washington Post
"Hosseini does tenderness and terror, California dream and Kabul nightmare with equal aplomb . . . a ripping yarn and ethical parable." --Globe and Mail
"A beautiful novel . . . a song in a new key. Hosseini is an exhilaratingly original writer with a gift for irony and a gentle, perceptive heart . . . one of the most lyrical, moving and unexpected novels of the year." --Denver Post
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