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Title: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini ISBN: 1-57322-245-3 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 29 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.88 (80 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Afghanistan, in all its spendor and despair.
Comment: Recreating the day-to-day existence of Amir and his father (Baba), a successful merchant in Kabul in the 1970's, Hosseini creates a warm and emotionally involving story of childhood, its traumas, and the importance of family. Telling of two families--Amir and his father, and Hassan and Ali, their servants--he depicts two different worlds. Amir and Baba are Pashtuns, while Hassan and Ali are Hazaras, descendants of the Moguls who are also Shi'a Muslims, and it is in these parallel tracks that we come to see the variety of life in Afghanistan, its mores, traditions, and its hierarchies.
Best friends, the boys grow up together, though Hassan, the servant, bears the burden of being different in appearance, both because of his Mogul heritage and because of his unrepaired hare-lip. When the boys are twelve, Hassan is beaten and severely injured by bullies, while Amir, who witnesses the attack, runs away in fear. Burdened by guilt and jealous of the close relationship between his father and Hassan and Ali, Amir manipulates their dismissal. Six years later, after a Communist coup, Amir and his father escape to the United States, where, away from the roles demanded of them in Kabul, they are on a more equal footing and come to new understandings. When Amir gets a phone call from his father's former business partner, twenty years later, he returns to Afghanistan to put his betrayal of Hassan to rights and "be good again."
Hosseini's narrative is fast-paced, and his sensitive portrayal of childhood with all its fears and tensions is striking. The glimpses of Afghan family life and values are captivating, particularly because they have been virtually unknown in American fiction. But it is the author's focus on the humanity of the characters that gives the novel its universality and appeal. Amir's betrayal of Hassan is believable and understandable, and his long-term remorse is not surprising. Hassan's nobility in the face of his trauma gives him a saintly aspect which never cloys. Baba seems larger than life, and it is only much later that Amir discovers that Baba, too, has secrets.
The focus on two families, one in the U.S. and one in Afghanistan, dramatically emphasizes the contrasts when the Taliban seizes power. This dual focus creates a few structural problems at the end of the novel, however, as the author reconnects the families. Relying heavily on coincidences, some of them unnecessary to the plot, he ties up loose ends and resolves conflicts. Occasionally, details seem artificial, inserted only to provide irony or obvious parallels with earlier events. Despite some narrative clumsiness, however, the novel is a moving and dramatic read, fascinating for its setting, its father-son relationship, and it study of guilt and its effects. Mary Whipple
Rating: 5
Summary: Your heart will soar
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: An incredible tale...one of the best books I have ever read!
Comment: After finishing this book I feel compelled to share it with every reader I know. I have sent copies to my friends, and family, as well as shared it with my reading groups at work and on line.
The story begins in Afghanistan in the 1970's. Amir remembers his childhood as a benevolent string of happy days, childhood memories that last a lifetime. It is this part of the book that I enjoyed through the author's eyes. Today we see Afghanistan as the war torn land depicted on the evening news, to read of the early days through the eyes of Hosseini is a delight. The joy and love for his native country literally pours out, to fill the pages with his memories of a country filled with beautiful, hospitable, and kind people.
Amir's friendship with a young servant boy is pivotal to the story, as a horrific event changes their relationship forever, thus effecting Amir's life in a way that he never expects. The political climate changes, and he flees to the USA with his father, where he learns to let his guilt simmer in the back of his mind. It is many years later when he is called back to Afghanistan, and comes face to face with the outcome of the betrayal, along with it's reciprocating factors.
The Taliban is entrenched in a country filled with all too many citizens that live in fear. The beauty he once knew is covered by rubble. As Amir follows the path that was set in motion decades prior, the reader can't help but feel totally immersed in his plight. I will give no more away, but promise you an end that is a touching portrayal of hope and justice.
Kudo's to this author who in his first book has given us a novel that fills the reader with a longing for more. He is a force to be reckoned with and worth watching....Kelsana 5/9/2004
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Title: The Namesake : A Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri ISBN: 0395927218 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi ISBN: 081297106X Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Today Show Book Club #13) by Mark Haddon ISBN: 0385512104 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 31 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Middlesex : A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides ISBN: 0312422156 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Time Traveler's Wife (Today Show Book Club #15) by Audrey Niffenegger ISBN: 1931561648 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 17 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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