A Touching, Heartfelt Read for the Human Soul

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, reviewed by Steve on 7/30/2008

Khaled Hosseini's debut novel, published in 2003, received worldwide fanfare and remains one of the best-selling novels to date. It was voted the Reading Group Book of the year in 2006, and since then, it has also been included on many schools' summer reading lists.

The novel tells the story of a boy named Amir, who is born into a wealthy and prosperous family in Kabul, Afghanistan, and his friendship with Hassan, the son of Ali, who is the servant for Amir's family. The two boys spend most of their days playing outside, whether they are kite fighting, pelting neighbors with seeds fired from slingshots, or telling stories by the pomegranate tree on the hill behind Amir's house.

But their friendship is complicated by Amir's growing awareness of Hassan's ethnicity. As a Pushtun, Amir is from the upper echelon of Afghanistan society, while Hassan, a Hazara, is from the lower class. A local thug named Assef, whose role model is apparently Adolf Hitler, taunts Amir for being friends with a lowly Hazara; an ethnic group he says are socially inferior.

The words of Assef seem to haunt Amir, who cannot shake off their influence, culminating in a traumatic encounter, where Hassan bravely stands up for Amir and is brutalized while Amir watches as he hides in terror. The event plagues Amir, who begins to feel as though his father's sentiments about his "unmanliness" are well-deserved. Hassan's heroic and at the same time, saint-like behavior makes Amir feel inadequate. To rid himself of Hassan and his own feelings of disappointment, Amir frames Hassan and his father, Ali, with the theft of Amir's birthday presents. Baba, Amir's father, is loathed to see them go, but Ali and Hassan are determined to leave, and Amir is certain that they know he framed them.

After moving to America and finding success in marriage and his budding career as an author, Amir cannot seem to forget Hassan and his last interaction with him, even after fifteen years of separation. Amir receives word from Baba's friend, Rahim Khan, who asks Amir to come to Pakistan, offering Amir a way to redemption for his actions.

Khaled Hosseini's novel can be described as being superbly human, among other things. Amir's disappointments at being unable to be what his father desires can translate seamlessly into every person's life where they have felt a similar kind of frustration. Additionally, Amir's inability to act the part of the hero when his friend needed him to separates this novel from the conventional stories and myths, where the reluctant protagonist is able to act with courage, bravery, and dignity. And yet despite this, we find ourselves similarly unable to judge Amir harshly. His actions seem to earn our pity more than our scorn. Furthermore, throughout the novel, and especially in the last third, Khaled Hosseini brings to life the horrors of civil war and the Taliban ideology through the shocked and terrified eyes of Amir, who serves to bridge the American-Afghan gap, as he finds "home" in both locations.

As a novel, The Kite Runner earns a rating of 4 from me on the 1-5 scale. It is both beautifully and expertly written and superbly moving. While it was a fast read for me, and I did thoroughly enjoy it, this book is more somber in tone than uplifting. There is hope and happiness, but the novel is above all, tragic and human. As such, I highly recommend this book if you want to be moved, but it does not make for light reading.