Khaled Hosseini

TL;DR: Starts out okay, but devolves into lifeless melodramatic dreck: an unimaginative soap opera plot padded out to book length.

I wanted to like this, I really did. But my tolerance for cheap melodramatic tricks is fairly low, and this book had exhausted my supply of it by the halfway point, and then it kept getting progressively worse. The closest parallel I can think of is unimaginative, lazily written daytime TV movies.

The kite runner starts as regular popular litfic: a middle-aged show more writer struggling to cope with Issues From His Past. The writer in question is Amir, an Afghan-American who emigrated when the Soviets occupied his home country, and his Issues From The Past stem from the guilt from how horribly he treated the servant boy he grew up with.

Throughout his childhood in Kabul, the main character’s relationship to his servant-cum-playmate Hassan is asymmetrical: Amir is literate, wealthy, sleeps in a house, and feels self-righteous and generous in lording all this over Hassan only subtly and occasionally, essentially treating him as affectionately as a pet. Hassan, by contrast, offers displays of friendship and loyalty that are almost comically exaggerated. During one such self-sacrificial display, Hassan runs afoul of the neighbourhood bully, who rapes him, while Amir watches from hiding, too scared to intervene. It is Amir’s guilt that later drives him to have Hassan sent away on false charges and to the aforementioned Issues From His Past.

So far, so litfic. But it is at this point, when the Taliban take over Afghanistan from the Soviets, and when Amir and his fellow Afghan-American wife are unable to conceive, that the book started to lose me. It turns out that -- dramatic chord! -- Hassan and Amir are … brothers! It also turns out that -- more dramatic chords -- while Hassan was killed by the Taliban, he has … a son! Who needs to be liberated … from the Taliban! Who looks … exactly like his father! A middle-aged writer could not have asked for a more perfect way to atone for his past self’s misdeeds.

And that, altogether, is Hosseini's only trick: whatever turn the plot takes is a direct answer to the question: "how can I make a writer's atonement even more cathartic?". The kite runner moves soullessly along this obviously-manufactured path to its destination of Feel-Good-Land. The Taliban leader who has taken the little boy for a sex slave turns out to be … the childhood bully who raped Hassan! And, very filmically, after his heroic extraction operation, Amir will forever sport a scar on his upper lip -- to parallel Hassan’s harelip! And then, because the adoption process may not go through, … the kid tries to commit suicide, and for a moment the ultimate atonement seems to slip out of the writer's grasp! But then a well-connected family-member-ex-machina pulls some strings, and … the adoption goes through anyway. Finally, at the end, as the middle-aged Amir engages Hassan’s son in a game he used to play with Hassan, the little boy … shows signs of happiness! I could not help but picture a soap opera’s dramatic zoom at each of these revelations, and each time I was a little more disappointed in how low this book had sunk.

On top of that, the prose takes pains to explicitly point out all of the parallelisms and echoes that so melodramatically accentuate Amir’s journey to atonement, as though we, the readers, cannot be trusted to see these things for ourselves. Daytime TV levels, indeed.

This book exasperated me: as it limped along Cliché Road, each new melodramatic chord and unimaginative plot point felt like it was actively trying to annoy me. None of the dramatic chord moments I listed are there because of things like well-rounded characters, thematic relevance, or attempts at a convincing plot: they are so transparently a hack writer’s one single trick to maximise the cathartic feeling at the end. The kite runner will tug at that one heart string in whatever way is the least imaginative and the most overdone.

I will not be reading another book by Khaled Hosseini. show less

*If you attempt any political or religious comment, you’re in trouble. Trust me, you don’t want to mess with one of my rants…’’

‘’Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter. Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.’’

‘’This is what it means to be a woman in this world.’’

It is difficult, so difficult to read a book you don’t want to touch. A book that gnaws at your heart and spits out the pieces with glee. show more Because even though you know the truth, you don’t want to face it. You are not ready, you are not prepared. You refuse to ‘’live’’ in a world that jumps from the pages, so eloquently depicted, so horrifying and tangible. You refuse to believe that there are still parts in the world where women’s value is lower than a speck of dust, a drop of urine. You refuse to face the reality of a world where Rasheeds and Jalils exist instead of being torn apart and thrown to the dogs.

Words are cheap when it comes to this novel. Every literary remark is void and pretentious. Read it and feel privileged that we live in lands where women are respected, equal to men, even though the road is still long. Political correctness be damned. This is living Hell…

‘’Where I come from, one wrong look, one improper word, and blood is spilled. Where I come from, a woman’s face is her husband’s business only.’’

‘’You will not, under any circumstances, show your face. You will cover with burqa when outside.
If you do not, you will be severely beaten.
Cosmetics are forbidden.
Jewelry is forbidden.
You will not wear charming clothes.
You will not speak unless spoken to.
You will not make eye contact with men.
You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.
You will not paint your nails. If you do, you will lose a finger.
Girls are forbidden from attending school. All schools for girls will be closed immediately.
Women are forbidden from working.
If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned to death.
Listen. Listen well. Obey. Allah-u-Akbar’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

"Devastating" and "beautiful" often sound cliché when they are paired together, but in the case of A Thousand Splendid Suns, these words are more than apt. Part of the power of the book is to that there are many Mariams and Lailas all over the world for whom this story is not a fiction. Hosseini manages to passionately advocate for them without hyperbole or an excess of drama, spinning a tale that is tragic, but so human. The horrors in the book are at times almost unreadable, but Hosseini show more compels you to read further because you feel you owe it to the characters who persevere. Ultimately, you realize you owe it to the many people in the world for whom bombs are a daily reality, and the frightening relativism of terrorism inside a house vs. outside a house is perhaps the sharpest edge of the knife.

In a book with so little that is redemptive, I was startled by the ending. It is perfect--not happy, nor sad, but the perfect way to let us know that the story goes on well beyond the last page of any book. show less

The Kite Runner is simply the most American foreign novel I've ever read. For those who aren't clear on this, that's not a good thing. We'll come back to this...

As a story, The Kite Runner starts a bit slow. I wasn't engaged as a reader until eighty to a hundred pages in. There was just considerable information to process and not much emotional weight to the story. The narrative jumped around quite a bit and it was difficult to follow. Then the tension began to rise. Amir, Hassan, and Baba show more became real. I was pulled into the narrative and I began to see how this story might actually warrant all the praise it has received. The characters were interesting and the plot was riveting.

For a chunk of this book somewhere in the middle, the story is quite good. There's the divisive heartrending story of the past that haunts our protagonist. His journey into adulthood, marriage, and immigration is insightful and honest. When the time comes for Amir to go back to Afghanistan, I expected the book to reach a satisfying conclusion, quietly observing Amir's past from his new position and providing Amir an opportunity to redeem himself for his past mistakes.

Then Khaled Hosseini did two things to crap all over any hopes I had for this book.

First, he found the cutest little ribbon he could, wrapped it around his story and tied it up so prettily. No, it doesn't end there. He found another cute ribbon. And he wrapped it around the story and the first bow. Then he found another. And another. There are no bloody kite strings in this novel. Those are the most ornate, gaudy ribbons the author could find because he wants you to see all of them. See this pretty ribbon here? Here's how I tie it all together. See this plot line here? Here's how I conveniently finish it off? Didn't see it? Well, let me explain it to you. There's redemption and there's soap opera drama needlessly orchestrated from page one. The Kite Runner is very much the second.

Second, and this is what really offends me, the intention of The Kite Runner is clear: to be a foreign novel that makes Americans happy that they're Americans. It justifies the superiority complex while convincing the reader that they're culturally aware. The western belief that Muslim nations are evil and that they need our salvation is abundant in the later half of this book. The Taliban is painted as a childish, hypocritical caricature with no need for sympathy. The only redeemable Muslim characters are those who reject any expression of faith and embrace western ideas and imagery. But it's all written by an Afghan, so it must be the way things are, right? Yes, The Kite Runner is a book that lets you feel cultured and entirely justified in bombing those bastards overseas.

I know many people love this book. I know that I've probably just stepped on many of their toes. They may think I'm calling them out as an “ignorant westerner.” I'm not. This book perpetuates these ideas, but falling for a good story while missing the underlying colonial notions can happen to the best of us, especially when the author is “one of them.” I do wish I'd read a book from Afghanistan that better represented the nation and its people. Hopefully, someday I'll get back around to it. show less