Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
In 1970′s Afghanistan, two young boys, Amir and Hassan, grow up together. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman of Kabul while Hassan is the son of his servant. Amir is a Pashtun while Hassan is a Hazara, an ethnic and religious minority oppressed and scorned by the Pashtuns. Therefore, the relationship between the two boys, which should be simple, is very complex. Hassan’s admiration for Amir is unconditional, and, while Amir loves Hassan, he is also ashamed of him and would never play with him in front of his school friends (Hassan himself is not schooled). Moreover, Amir’s relationship with his father complicates further is friendship with Hassan. Hassan is the athletic boy Amir’s father would have dreamed of having and Amir can’t help being jealous. Amir is clumsy when it comes to sports, and is prone to reading or daydreaming rather than fighting. When the annual kite tournament takes place in Kabul, Amir sees the chance to finally win his father’s approval, but he could not foresee that a terrible choice he would make that day would instead change his relationship with Hassan, and the course of his life too…
When the communists invade Afghanistan a couple of years later, Amir and his father flee to the United States where they build a new life. Hassan marries, becomes a writer, but deep down, he can never forget the cowardice that tainted his childhood days. One phone call from his father’s friend brings everything back: 25 years later, Amir will finally have a chance to atone….
First of all, what became quite obvious after only a few pages is that Khaled Hosseini is a great storyteller. He knows how to draw the reader into a fascinating story and create interesting characters with good psychological insight. From reading, we also get the flavor of what it must have been to live in Kabul at different periods of its troubled history. Up until the first half of the novel, I would have rated this novel a five. Unfortunately, in the second half, I wonder why Khaled Hosseini felt the need to spoil the plot with unlikely but convenient coincidences. After a while, the story becomes so contrived and predictable that I could tell most plot elements in advance. These cheap tricks are unworthy of this kind of story, in my opinion. The novel ended up too polished, too tied-up together, too much of a tear jerker, at the expense of credibility. Khaled Hosseini wanted to write a good story but I some point he decided he wanted to please the Lifetime Movie Network watchers too… I think it is a shame, mostly when you put it in balance with the gravity of the novel, the horror the heroes live through, and the too real terror of the Taliban regime.
To sum things up, I think The Kite Runner is a good story, mostly for a first novel, and I hope Khaled Hosseini will skip the contrived plot in his second novel and write a more "honest" story…
Rating: 4/5
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