The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Let me start out by saying The Kite Runner is my new favorite book. It has taken the place of Wicked in my top five books. I have been hearing about this book all year; it is a required text for UCF's freshmen comp classes, and many of my students have been suggesting it to me. Once I began this book, I could not put it down.

This is the story of Amir, a young boy growing up in Afghanistan before, during, and after tyranical political shifts. The Kite Runner describes Amir's transformation throughout the drastic change of his country and family. It is beautifully written, descriptive enough for you to envision your position in the story. This is a fiction novel, but at times, it feels very real. When I finished this book, I put it down and just wept. I wept for Amir, for the atonement of his sins, for his life, but then for the people who actually live/lived in this country. This is a must read for everyone!

"In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ('...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.')

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ('people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz'), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon." --Gisele Toueg

Read at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594480001/qid=1150819756/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-5804579-5127935?s=books&v=glance&n=283155