It’s been on my read­ing list for a while and I finally man­aged to fin­ish it!

The Kite Run­ner is about two boys Amir and Has­san who grow up in Afghanistan. While Amir is the son of a busi­ness­man, Hassan’s father is a ser­vant to Amir’s father. Yet, they forge a friend­ship when they are really young (they are also nursed by the same woman). Inspite of their close­ness, Amir finds it dif­fi­cult to acknowl­edge Has­san as a friend because of their class dif­fer­ences. Once par­tic­u­lar inci­dent seals their fate and Amir can never rec­on­cile to what con­sti­tutes a rather cow­ardly act.

Soon after the fam­i­lies are torn apart and Amir lands up in Amer­ica as an immi­grant. By a turn of fate, after a 20 year absence, he has to travel back to Afghanistan and relives his child­hood and tries to atone for the way he treated Has­san. In his jour­ney, he uncov­ers another secret that leaves him even more shameful.

Khaled Hosseini’s first novel is a page-turner and I man­aged to get through it quite quickly. It’s provoca­tive, inter­est­ing and the well-fleshed out char­ac­ters hold you by the scruff and pull you into the pages.

I enjoyed the book immensely. There are not so many descrip­tive nov­els based on life in Afghanistan and Hos­seini paints a fas­ci­nat­ing pic­ture of life in the coun­try before and after Tal­i­bi­sa­tion, Russ­ian occu­pa­tion and the Muja­hed­din. War, pol­i­tics, betrayal, friend­ship, rela­tion­ships and the class sys­tem in Afghanistan forms the back­drop and keep your occupied.

Khaled Hos­seini now works as a doc­tor and received polit­i­cal asy­lum in 1980.

A must read, folks!