A Book Review on 'the Kite Runner'

I have never known much about the country of Afghanistan, much less about its people and culture. Also, the little information I had known about it mostly came from the “9-11” bombings in America by al-Quaeda terrorists, which projected a somehow negative image of their nation in my mind. But while I feasted on Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel “The Kite Runner”, much of my perspective of this Middle-East country has changed.

“There is a way to be good again.”

That simple statement found in the first chapter is one of the most significant lines in the entire novel, propelling an Afghan man’s journey towards personal salvation. The story starts in the capital city of Kabul, where the young boy Amir (also the story’s narrator) lives in a sprawling mansion with his famous, respected father whom he calls Baba. Amir spends most of his childhood playing with Hassan, a hare lipped boy who is the son of Ali, the family’s loyal servant. Hassan is equally loyal to Amir, though Amir sometimes slightly puts him down. Although Amir is a Pashtun and Hassan is a Shi’a, two conflicting ethnic groups in Afghanistan, the friendship of the boys makes them inseparable from each other.

One of the issues Amir struggles with as a boy is to gain the affection and recognition he wants from his father. Known as the man who bare-handedly wrestled a bear (and won), Baba seems to be disappointed with his son’s peaceful nature and interest in literature and writing stories, not physical workouts. However, there is a single sport in which Amir and Baba can relate well: fighting kites. When the annual kite fighting competition draws near, Amir resolves to win, because he believes that by doing so his father can finally be proud of him. Triumphantly, on the day of the competition, he does become champion of the tournament.

What follows next is the tradition of “running the kite”, where everybody tries to gain possession of the last kite that fell. Hassan, one of the best kite runners, always...