Amazing novel, excellent effort ... don’t know where to start ,but onus to Khalid Hoseini for his first novel ‘The Kite Runner” where he has shown devastating truth about the universal aspect of life: family, love, respect, friendship, disloyalty and war.
A timely novel set in the background of Afghanistan’s turbulent history. It is weaven away in such sort that it compels you to cry while you are reading the book. You really feel like thinking is this the way I am leading my life? Living in the Afghanistan in the 1960s ,young Amir (the protagonist) was constantly yearning for the love from his widowed father ,but was at the same time enjoying his privilege of material comfort, luxury of learning and a playmate in the form of Hassan ,a hazara. Despite their social flux ,Amir and Hassan enjoyed their friendship in such a way that though Amir was deceitful of his servant friend Hassan, by taunting him in those story sessions under the pomegranate tree beyond those cemetries, Hassan ever remain faithful that he was even prepared to eat dirt for his friendship. Their friendship really came to a litmus test on that fateful afternoon of 1975 when Amir’s cowardly failure to defend his friend left him with guilt and causes great rift among themselves, that the scar doesn’t heal Amir even after twenty years. Russian soldiers invade Afghanistan and Amir and his father had to seek political asylum in America. There he discovered his two loves: literature and Soorya ,his jaan.
After living 15 years in America, Amir receives a call from Rahim Khan, and flies to Pakistan to meet him . From Rahim Khan ,he learns shocking truths about his father and Hassan. There he finds and opportunity to amend his guilt by going back to Afghanistan and rescue Hassan’s son Sohrab from an orphanage.
What’s so conspicuous about this novel is its language, there is no display of writing but only expressions and expressions. Hoseini has achieved in winning our hearts by expressing Amir’s determination to atone his youthful cowardice, which is quite dramatic but then it is worth.
I am moved , and it made me to tears when on the later part of the story , Hassan mentions about the pomegranate tree where they had spend hours of playing and reading as “ the tree hasn’t borne fruit in years”. Such a culvinism taste, Hoseini has brought its magnificience in my eyes when I read this book. And not to forget, the pluralism Hoseini had inscribed in the story on both the beginning and in the end. The novel begins with Amir’s memory where Hassan is running after the kite for him , and the novel ends with Amir running for Hassan’s son Sohrab, as he begins a new life in America. Hoseini has perfectly shown that human’s capacity of kindness is forgiveness.
This is a real masterpiece, and I recommend everyone to read. On literary circle , it has its own essence . 3rd highest selling book in 2005 in the whole of Northern America ( more than 3 million prints), 120 weeks in NewYork bestselling chart, printed in 38 languages worldwide, soon going to be a major motion movie......... what makes you stopping to read this novel. Go , get yourself a copy and entertain yourself in its simplicity .
