Customer Reviews

The Kite Runner

5 star:		(2,052)
4 star:		(478)
3 star:		(177)
2 star:		(127)
1 star:		(78)

 

 

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.

I read 2-3 books a week, and this is without a doubt my favorite of this year. No, I'll go further: it's one of maybe 8-10 books I'd choose to take to a deserted isle. I've put The Kite Runner directly into the hands of perfect strangers in book stores and said, "Read this one."
In a nutshell, Amir, the son of a well-to-do Afghani , has a best friend, Hassan, who is the illiterate child of Amir's father's long-time servant. Both children are motherless. A horrific event, a secret kept, the loss of personal honor, and a lie come between the boys. From that rift, the story moves forward as Amir and his father emigrate to California, where Amir matures, marries, and becomes a successful writer, but is still plagued by those old sins and lies. Then comes a revelation of still one more long-held secret that sets Amir on a return trip to Afghanistan (now under the worst years of Taliban dominance) to rescue Hassan's child. Author Hosseini doesn't shy from one iota of unpleasantness, and the result is a book with a perfect narrative arc, a sterling story line, unforgettable characters, and and and and... I had the opportunity to meet the author very briefly (just to shake his hand and gush a bit about his extraordinary book) at Books by the Bay in San Francisco and am delighted to report that he is charming, approachable, and thoroughly engaging. He deserves all the accolades that are coming his way.
Buy The Kite Runner. Read it. Then go back to the store and buy 2 more signed 1st editions - one to keep as an investment and one to give to your best friend.
...what a fine book!

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini is one of those marvelous books that opens up our hearts and minds. This book puts a name and face to the people we are helping to free. This is a book at once so magnificent,it is difficult to comprehend and describe. How could we be fighting for freedom in this far off land, Afghanistan, and not understand the people; their heritage, their land and what they lost?

This book transports us to a very different time in the 1960's. Amir and Hassan, friends, raised in the same household, but in different worlds. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, and Hassan is the son of the servant, Hazara. There may be a difference in the lives they led, but they became fast friends. Amir would learn to read and Hassan would not. Amir would have the most beautiful toys and particularly kites, and Hassan would be able to help Amir play with the toys and run (fly) his kite. Amir was the spolied son, Hassan was the intelligent and intuitive servant's son. Their lives would intertwine even when separated.

When the Russian army invaded, Amir and his father fled to the United States, California. Amir grew up in a different land, but with the same Afghanistan culture. He and his father became close. Amir married, went to college, all the while wondering what happened to his childhood friend, the one he betrayed.

As time marched on, Amir lost his father to cancer and was summoned to Pakistan to meet with an old family friend. This turns out to be a life renewing event. Amir searches for news of his friend, Hassan. The search takes him back to Afghanistan, to an orphanage, a meeting with a member of the Taliban, a search for his lost city and culture and for a prize he will cherish, for the truth and for the life he regains.

This is a gritty book, the beauty and violence of this country, Afghanistan, comes to life. The customs and food and smells of the city; the desolation of life and the loss of the country to madmen who are running it with only their imagined vulgar needs and wealth in mind that destroys a culture so varied and rich.
We can imagine we are there, and we can share in the sights, the smells, the utter disregard for human life. But we can never know what these people have lost. A book, I will cherish, so will you. prisrob

This is a truly magnificent book! Without a doubt one of the very best stories I have ever read, not just because it is so beautifully written, but also because it is an important story. It takes place during the last thirty years of turbulent history in Afghanistan, and deals with a family and their love for each other and for their country. Author Khalid Hosseini no doubt has drawn heavily on his own life experiences to bring us this story. He was born to a wealthy family in Kabul Afghanistan and came to America as a political refugee in 1980. In The Kite Runner, Amir is the son of a prominent Pashtun family; his best friend, Hassan is the son of their servant man and a Hazara, a much hated ethnic minority. Despite their ethnic differences, Amir and Hassan are close friends throughout their childhood, both of them always mindful of Hassan's servant status. The two boys grow and learn, one of them privileged, the other deprived, both of them secure in the bosom of a prominent Pashtun family, both loved by the patriarch of that family, while the winds of change blew ceaselessly over the Afghan landscape. This story traces the lives of Amir and Baba his proud Father, and of Hassan and Ali his Father and faithful servant to Baba. In July of 1973, the people of Afghanistan woke to learn that while their King Zahir Shah was away in Italy, the Afghan monarchy had been ended in a bloodless coup led by the King's cousin Daoud Kahn. For a while there was peace in their lives but it was not to last. Before the end of that decade came first the Russians with soldiers, tanks and helicopter gun ships, and when they left, came the years of wanton destruction by the countless tribal war lords. This was to be ended, they thought mercifully, by the arrival of the Taliban, who at first brought order to the chaos, but later proved to be the most ruthless of killers. Amir and his Father left Afghanistan when the Russians arrived and came to America to settle in an Afghan community in San Francisco. However, the ties to their homeland and to the family they had left behind were to haunt them for years. One day, Amir received a telephone call from a friend in Pakistan and decided he must return. What he found there was a revelation of the awful changes which had been brought to his homeland and its people since his childhood. Don't buy this book because it is about that part of the world which changed our lives, don't buy it because it is a story about Muslims, don't even buy it because it is in a way a modern "Gone With The Wind" a story of a strong family in turbulent times. Buy it because it is a wonderful meaningful story, beautifully, sensitively written, by a man whose first language was not even our language, but who has mastered it as few of us have, and who has shown an unusual understanding of the workings of the human mind in times of great mental and physical stress.

In regards to the previous review, I appreciate that as an Afghani, you have a level of understanding that others may not have. But I think you are misguided on your review. I don't necessarily disagree with you when you mention the numerous plot twists that occur near the end of the novel... they seem overly dramatic and often quite unrealistic. But I think you judge far too harshly, taking into consideration that this is Hosseini's first novel. And I for one cannot stand David Foster Wallace, so I suppose that it may be a matter of taste.

What 'The Kite Runner' is to me is a novel that allows outsiders a glimpse of recent history of a nation that they knew very little about. The television images now of a burnt out, impoverished city that was, not long ago, a place of far greater happiness and tranquility. How often are we able to hear the voice of an Afghani telling us what they think of the present state of Afghanistan... the destruction caused by the Taliban, and the consequences of their rule. I merely knew what Pakistani friend told me in 1997, when we were in prep school together. It didn't mean much then, but I think of it now quite often. "The Taliban, man," he said, "They mean business. They are some mean bast****."

I suppose hearing those words from someone with perspective means something more than hearing it from a talking head on CBS or FOX news. I felt the same sort of authenticity from Hosseini's novel... a small story that dealt with a scenario much larger. And without the moving story that unfolded within the pages, would we really have cared to learn more about this subject? It takes the humanity we feel when we begin to care about individual characters to summon the empathy we need to care about an entire people.

I wanted to read the book because I'm an Afghan émigré myself, and I was really interested to read my first novel by an Afghan émigré.

The first part of the book, which is about the protagonist's childhood in Kabul, was a like a psychoanalysis session for me - it revived so many long-forgotten childhood memories. Almost with every paragraph, I thought to myself, yes, I remember doing that too!

Then the book turns into a soap opera. They move to the US; struggle with their daily lives; there's the inevitable love story; the father dies of cancer; etc. But with just one phone call from Pakistan, suddenly the story becomes an action drama, the kind you see in the movies, with an implausible sequence of events. The story becomes over-dramatized and filled with clichés. I couldn't stop thinking that Hosseini had making a movie in mind when writing the book.

The background information about the culture and contemporary history of Afghanistan is not bad, but you can get more information if you just watch a PBS special on Afghanistan.

Some of the recent fiction that I have been reading lately includes Saramago, David Foster Wallace, and Houellebecq. Comparing with these writers, it's hard for me not to say that this book is second-rate literature. I'm really puzzled with all these glorifying reviews on this board. I had never written a review on Amazon before, but felt like I should write one for this book since it seemed to me to be overrated.

This was an excellent book, but it does not deserve the five star average it has received to this point. I'm giving it three stars because despite Hosseini's gift for words, the book had some flaws.

(1) There were certain scenes towards the end that just didn't need to be there. Some scenes reminded me of a Michael Crieghton novel, where the protagonist just barely makes it out of the alligator infested river to find himself face to face with a bear. Hosseini adds these extra scenes to make the symbolism fit into a neat little package, almost to the point where it's artificial.

(2) As per (1) above, because Hosseini needs to get his symbolism into a nice little package by the end of the book, there is more than one unsubstantiated coincidence that seems too good to be true.

Besides these flaws, the book reads easily and the plot is fluid. I also began to deeply feel for the characters and their plight. It was the rediculous coincidences that kept this book from getting 4 stars.

Khaled Hosseini's first novel, THE KITE RUNNER, tells the story of a young boy named Amir who grows up in a financially aristocratic subculture of Afghanistan prior to the Russian invasion, eventually escapes with his father to California via Pakistan, and ultimately returns to the Taliban-governed Afghanistan to help the son of his childhood best friend, Hassan. After more than 450 book reviews, it hardly seems necessary to recap the story line yet again. Suffice to say that the story is told linearly and chronologically, tracing the arc of Amir's life into early middle age, from childhood to marriage, from betraying his best friend to achieving redemption for his failures.

To its credit, THE KITE RUNNER operates on a number of simultaneous levels - as a depiction of Afghani culture and the horrendous changes the country has experienced, as a tale of childhood betrayal, sublimated guilt, and ultimate redemption, as a story of family secrets and their effects, and as a parable about fathers and sons and their expectations of one another. This is a man's story told by a man about a male-dominated culture; woman serve mostly as plot facilitators and are not well drawn or deeply presented. Nevertheless, THE KITE RUNNER is an engaging tale and Hosseini shows himself to be an effective storyteller. If nothing else, he knows how to pull his readers' heartstrings. Most readers will enjoy the story of Amir's childhood friendship with Hassan, their kite flying successes, Amir's harrowing escape from Afghanistan with his father, and his dangerous quest in Kabul.

Unfortunately, THE KITE RUNNER also displays a first novelist's flaws. The plot is improbable and yet all too predictable, particularly the last third when character development is all but abandoned in favor of mysteries and emotional climaxes that are easily foreseen - the identity of the sadistic man in the sunglasses, Sohrab's ultimate home placement, the long-deferred fight between Amir and his childhood antagonist, and Sohrab's role in resolving their fight, his life and death hospital struggle, and the problem of his emigration. Each outcome is easily anticipated 50 - 100 pages before it happens, and some like Sohrab's visa and Amir's entry into a writing career are resolved with breathtaking ease.

Even more noticeable are the book's interconnected plot lines - one can practically see them drawn on the written pages. The parallels between Ali/Hassan and Baba/Amir, Hassan and then Sohrab defending Amir from Assef with their slingshots, the kite running and kite wallpaper, Hassan's harelip doubled by Amir's cut lip, Amir's betrayal of Hassan followed by Baba's betrayal of Amir, Amir's being motherless because of her death during his birth paired with Hassan's motherlessness and followed by Soraya's infertility, Baba standing up to the Russian soldier and Amir's standing up to Assef, and on and on. Hosseini's heavy-handed plotting ensures that THE KITE RUNNER has no loose threads, only perfect, closed circles. A world leading to a happily ever after future where all sins are repented, all failings redeemed, and all wrongs vindicated belongs in fairy tales, but hardly in a realistic novel about Afghanistan, of all places.

THE KITE RUNNER offers good reading entertainment with an eventful plot and plenty of black and white characters set against a cultural backdrop mostly unknown to American readers. It is not a great work of literature. One can hope, however, that Khaled Hosseini has more stories to tell and that his writing craft will evolve with them.

I have been reading novels for decades, but in all those years of reading, this is possibly the best story I have read that has a non-western setting. An Afghan friend recommended this book to me, and of course I was skeptical at first. I never expected it to be such a powerful, deep moving, well-written and touching story that happened to be set in Afghanistan.

Set in Afghanistan, in Kabul in the 1970's, the Kite Runner moves to the U.S.A and back. It includes fascinating characters like Amir who lived a privileged life as the son of an affluent man, and Hassan the son of a poor servant who perks for Amir's privileged life. The two become good friends, a friendship which is tested when Hassan is raped, a scene witnessed by Amir who made no effort to come to his friend's rescue. Yet Amir is haunted by that moment of cowardice even as he leaves for the USA.

Even though it is a fiction, this haunting story with spectacular, yet uncomfortable scenes creates in the reader a sense of reality that is difficult not to believe.It reminded me of Flash of the Sun.I easily felt like I was reading the real life story of a young boy, who grows up still haunted by his past cowardice. The characters are real and alive, the setting in Afghanistan and America is superb, the plot is outstanding and the pace of the novel is fast and captivating.. All in all, this emotionally gripping story provides an insight and understanding of the human tragedy in Afghanistan. The author successfully touched on human emotions, stirring guilt, sadness, anger, and happiness throughout the book.[...]

The first 3/4 of The Kite Runner is spectacular -- harrowing and exciting at the same time. I felt deeply for the characters and sensed I understood them well and fully. There are six extremely well-fleshed out characters, each complex and with complex relationships to one another -- due to family, politics and personality. And it is a page-turner, the events captivating even in the midst of multi-layered brutality.

The last section however, about 150 pages, is less interesting. The book becomes predictable to the point of ridiculous coincidences; the characters lack the depth of the first part; it becomes purely plot-driven, and a very major plot flaw is overlooked. At this point it's a matter of waiting for the plot to unfold in the ways it invariably must, given its now [ironically] Hollywood/American style. At times, during this final quarter, the only surprising elements are its sugar-sweet sentimentality. The reading slows down, and there was no more page turning for me, but to get to the end. It would make a fine Ron Howard vehicle.

Overall, it's not terrible and much of it is quite good. But given the final chunk, my opinion is that it's over-praised and its Hollywood-style plot devices toward the end are unfortunately ill-suited to the material. And just to point out: it's an accessible read, not "intellectual" (though I realize that comes out as an insult...it is what it is, fast and easy reading even though the material is polical and brutal).