the kite runner - khaled hosseini

22nd march 2007

published in 2003, this book is perhaps one of the saddest books i have read to date. sad because one has to live with guilt and regret all one's life for not doing what one was supposed to have done at the time it was supposed to have been done.

crying was easy, as easy as flipping through the pages till the end. hosseini's debut novel is powerful yet simple. his talent is in his simplicity, no exaggerated words and nothing fancy. very clear in his descriptions.

this story is about love, betrayal, friendship, family (mainly father and son), caste, custom, strength, religion and god, politics and history and doing the right things, with the possibility of redemption at the end. one learns about afghanistan and the situation there during the russian invasion. and how afghanistan suffered after that under the taliban regime and the fact that caste issues never really went away.

it is amazing that hosseini, a physician in california gets to visit kabul only after his completion of this book when he finally sees everything through amir's eyes. amir is the protagonist he creates.

when i read this, i thought to myself and pleaded, please dont tell me this was taken from a true story, please no. not because of the events that happened but because hassan, the servant, the friend, the half brother was perfect in all that he was, and i wondered a while if such goodness is always met with an equal force of evil, or perhaps greater.

and also, he was portrayed to be so accepting of abuse and is always willing to forgive that i wondered a while if forgiveness is a conscious act or does it present itself naturally in character?

after chang and eng, this is perhaps the second novel which affected me, my thoughts, my chain of ideas, my perception in quite a drastic way.

the movie which will be out in november and is directed by marc foster (stranger than fiction, finding neverland and monster's ball)has zekeria ebrahimi,an iranian as amir the child, and hassan is ahmad khan mahmidzada, an afghani who says the rape scene has upset him majorly because his friends would think that he really got raped. i believe they were also underpaid as actors. cant wait to see the film though.

despite the way the critics have condemned this book, i think it is one of the most intriguing 324 pages i have read. :-)