THE KITE RUNNER
4 Comments
»
This is the second book I picked up to read after exams, and finished it in my personal record breaking single sitting. Never has any other book captivated and enthralled me like THE KITE RUNNER. I came to know about this book thanks to, yet again, Sari Bua. She is the same aunt who introduced me to The Chicken Soup for the Soul book many years earlier.
THE KITE RUNNER is a book, which I ventured out into reading due to the fact that it has been made into a major motion picture and its advance screening at various places was generating rave reviews. As it normally happens with me, most of the times the books recommended with the "must-read" or "awesome" tag, end up disappointing me spectacularly. That series of disappointments has finally come to an end with THE KITE RUNNER.
Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel, THE KITE RUNNER, starts out by describing the relationship between two Afghan boys --- Amir, who is the novel’s narrator and the son of a well-known Kabul businessman, and Hassan, the son of Ali, a servant in the household of Amir’s father. Amir is a Pashtun and Sunni Muslim, while Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a. Despite their ethnic and religious differences, Amir and Hassan grow to be friends, although sometimes Amir is troubled to label their relationship as "friendship".
Amir relationship with his father is often a source of tension in his life. He comes to feel that maybe Baba (his father) supports Hassan more than him. Baba feels that Amir isn't strong enough to carry the legacy of his father. Whenever Amir falls into trouble, its usually Hassan who comes to his rescue. Desperate to prove himself to his father, Amir turns to the kite flying tournament, and at the age of 12, with the assistance of Hassan, he wins the annual tournament in Kabul. Hassan, the best Kite-runner in all of Afghanistan, offers to run down and bring the kite which Amir last sliced to win the tournament. But Amir’s victory turns into a nightmare when he witnesses a vicious assault against Hassan, and fails to come to his aid. Amir’s cowardice is compounded by a later act of betrayal that causes Ali and Hassan to leave their home, and he now faces the nightmare prospect of bearing the burden of his ill-fated choices for the rest of his life.
A few years later, the Russians invade Afghanistan, and Amir and Baba are forced to flee the country for California. In America, Amir graduates, marries and becomes a successful novelist. Amir’s world is shaken in 2001 when he receives a call from his father’s best friend, informing him that “There is a way to be good again.” That call launches him on a harrowing journey to rescue Hassan’s son Sohrab, orphaned by the brutal Taliban, and at the same time redeem himself from the torment of his youthful mistakes.
This is one of the books that you can't put down that easily. Hosseini's writing is like a beautiful poetry. Every word takes you deeper into the heart of Afghanistan, over a period of 30 years. The story of Amir and Hassan's friendship lingers in your mind long after you've put down the book. As I read it, I just had a haunting feeling that I was there first hand, looking at all the events taking place. Khaled Hosseini's writing is so powerful that you feel the pain, the friendship, the betrayal with each page that you turn. For a debut novel, THE KITE RUNNER is just breathe-takingly well written. A sure must read for everyone.
Excerpts from the book:
Excerpt # 1:
December 2001
I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.
One day last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He asked me to come see him. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn’t just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins. After I hung up, I went for a walk along Spreckels Lake on the northern edge of Golden Gate Park. The early-afternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. Then I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high above the trees on the west end of the park, over the windmills, floating side by side like a pair of eyes looking down on San Francisco, the city I now call home. And suddenly Hassan’s voice whispered in my head: For you, a thousand times over. Hassan the harelipped kite runner.
I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought. There is a way to be good again. I looked up at those twin kites. I thought about Hassan. Thought about Baba. Ali. Kabul. I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today.
Excerpt # 2:
Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time can break.
Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And under the same roof, we spoke our first words.
Mine was Baba.
His was Amir. My name.
Looking back on it now, the foundation of what happened in the winter of 1975 - and all that followed - was already laid in those first words.
Subscribe by RSS