The Kite Runner

Just when you think nothing worse could happen to our main character, Amir, it mercilessly and devastatingly does. Yet by the end just when circumstances seem beyond help there is a glimmer of redeeming hope, of the possibility of living a good life. It might be fair to say this could also be said of Afghanistan, Amir's homeland. Hosseini gives us a strong sense of Afghanistan, its history, its people and leaves us wanting something better for it. This a powerful novel that moves well from beginning to end. And, yes, kite flying is so important to the unfolding story.

Quotes: (page 136) “Long before the Roussi army marched into Afghanistan, long before villages were burned and schools destroyed, long before mines were planted like show more seeds of death and children buried in rock-pile graves, Kabul had become a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts.
America was different. America was a river, roaring along unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.”

(page 226) “I wished Rahim Khan hadn't called me. I wish he had let me live on in my own oblivion. But he had called me. And what Rahim Khan revealed to me changed things. Made me see how my entire life, long before the winter of 1975, dating back to when that singing Hazara women was nursing me, had been a cycle of lies, betrayals, and secrets.”

(page 301) “What you did was wrong, Amir jan, but do not forget you were a boy when it happened. A troubled little boy. You were too hard on yourself then, and you still are---I saw it in your eyes in Peshawar. But I hope you will heed this. A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer. I hope your suffering comes to an end with this journey to Afghanistan.” show less

The Kite Runner is an emotional, unflinching exploration of guilt, redemption, and the complicated ties that bind fathers and sons. Khaled Hosseini masterfully crafts a story that stretches across decades of personal and national turmoil in Afghanistan, inviting readers into a deeply personal narrative set against the devastating consequences of history, war, and silence.
At the heart of the novel is the relationship between Amir, a privileged boy, and Hassan, the son of his father's servant. Their friendship is marked by deep affection but also by painful inequality—and a betrayal that haunts Amir into adulthood. What makes this book particularly powerful is its willingness to delve into the darker sides of human nature: cowardice, show more guilt, shame, and the often paralyzing struggle to make amends.
While the novel includes scenes and themes that are difficult to process—violence, abuse, and moral failure—they are essential to the integrity of the story. Hosseini doesn’t include them for shock value but to provoke empathy and a sense of shared responsibility. These moments are necessary reminders that injustice and cruelty thrive not only through the actions of the wicked but through the inaction of the silent.
What truly elevates The Kite Runner is its duality—it is both a story of personal atonement and a mirror reflecting the soul of a fractured nation. The prose is poetic yet grounded, and every character, no matter how minor, feels fully realized.
Though the book may be a challenging read for some, it's precisely this emotional weight that gives it such lasting impact. It forces readers to reflect on their own choices, courage, and capacity for forgiveness. It's not just a novel—it's an awakening. show less

Проникновенная, пробирающая до самого нутра история о дружбе и верности, о предательстве и искуплении. Нежный, ироничный и по-хорошему сентиментальный, роман Халеда Хоссейни напоминает живописное полотно, которое можно разглядывать бесконечно.История разворачивается в довоенном Кабуле 1970-х. В этом волшебном городе, переливающемся всеми оттенками золота и лазури, живут два мальчика-погодка, Амир и show more Хасан. Один принадлежал к местной аристократии, другой - к презираемому меньшинству. У одного отец был красив и важен, у другого - хром и жалок. Господин и слуга, принц и нищий, красавец и калека. Но не было на свете людей ближе, чем эти два мальчика. Вскоре кабульская идиллия сменится грозными бурями. И мальчиков, словно двух бумажных змеев, подхватит эта буря и раз­метает в разные стороны. У каждого своя судьба, своя трагедия, но они, как и в детстве, связаны прочнейшими узами.Ты бежишь з... show less

Though carefully and dramatically crafted, this is the kind of book that makes me think it is long past time

for us to re-cross the African Savannas and hoist ourselves back up into the trees.

Horror after horror, Betrayal after Betrayal, Lies, Guilt, and Grief...after....

If the author's goal was to make readers confront their own courage in the face of Evil,
it totally succeeded with the onslaught of coincidences and improbable obstacles,
even the final stupidity of Amir's words to Hassan's son.

This is one of those books I avoided when it was being talked about everywhere because...well, because it was being talked about everywhere. I'm just so skeptical of things EVERYONE is reading and hyping. For this month's American Authors Challenge, however, I decided to at least try it. I am glad to have read it; I mostly admire the way it was written, although I have a couple quibbles which I will mention later. Since it has been so widely reviewed, I won't go into the story line here (although I must say I knew very little about it other than its setting when I finally picked it up). It's powerful, often brutal, stuff -- especially disheartening to read at this point in time, knowing what has happened in Afghanistan in the two show more decades since the book was written, because then there was some hope for a brighter future for that troubled country. Two things bothered me about this novel. First, I simply could not see the narrator as a sympathetic protagonist, no matter how honestly he portrayed his own failings and desire to overcome them. He repeatedly displayed a lack of empathy for people he purported to love, and so often did the wrong thing in the circumstances, even when trying to atone for his past. Forgivable in the child, much less so in the man who should have learned a few things from life. Second, I was put off by the "poetic justice" of the climactic events. Just too perfectly coincidental, too obviously authorial...not like reality at all. I can't say this was an enjoyable reading experience, but as a representation of what life is like in a country where fanatics rule, it feels essential, somehow. show less

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 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 show more 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

It may be a strange thing to say, but The Kite Runner, for me, was a page-turner; I never thought it would flow so fast! This story of a lost friendship, lasting regrets and the effort at redemption was riveting, to say the least. The author's imagery of the life in Kabul of the pre-russian-occupation era is nostalgic and the account of its destruction is heartbreaking.
In spite of an unlikeable protagonist, too convenient coincidences and many cliches, The Kite Runner is a moving story, written beautifully.