The Kite runner

I'd bought this book while I was in India but dint get a chance to read as Puja had borrowed it. I'd heard very good reviews of the book and finally I read it. The description is so good that one can easily visualize it and if a movie is being made on it the Director will have no issues at all. It’s about Amir's cowardice and how he admits to it and finally stands up and does something decent. Towards the end it becomes like a Hindi movie...but I really liked it.

I have never done any book reviews before this, but this book really inspired me to do one. Despite it being the debut novel of the writer, I think he has done a marvellous job. While reading one feels he's telling his own story, but its not. The intricate details of the place the feelings. Many a times I literally cried while reading the novel. The novel very well covers the lifestyle of 2 countries rather 3, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US of A. The political invasion of Soviet and Taliban in Afghanistan and its consequences in the lives of many people including Amir and Hassan. (It always made me imagine the situation of India and Pakistan while our independence, it’s such an irony most of the countries go through the same phase one time or the other.)

It's a story about Amir and Hassan, their boyhood days and days as adults. They grew up together in Afghanistan, Amir the son of a wealthy man a Pashtun a Sunni Muslim and Hassan the son of the servant who worked for Amir's father. Amir lost his mother in child birth, He always longing for love from his father a wealthy man who is puzzled that his son is more interested in reading books than soccer. Both motherless children growing together as friends but also maintained their status as servant and master. Hassan protective about Amir, always saves his master from trouble, but then too at times Amir showed his superior position. Hassan who was so pure at heart and loved Amir so much never seemed to mind and he knew Amir too well and could read him easily. Amir was fond of Hassan too and they shared a very unique and different kind of friendship and it was precious to both of them. The plot of the novel changes completely on the day of kite flying competetion, Amir won the compettion by cutting all the kites in compettion and having his kite flying in the sky and to further make it memorious moment Kiterunner Hassan ran to get the last kite that Amir cut. That day Hassan was in trouble with some bullying from neighbourhood
Boys for the kite and Amir just hides watching the bullying behaving like a coward. It changes his life totally and remains with him through out. Meanwhile the soviets invade Afghanistan as a result of which Amir (as a child) and his father move to America and Amir returns to Afghanistan only as an adult to see its destruction and to concord his sins to Hassan. "There is a way to be good again" a friend of Amir counsels him in the novel, and he comes to Afghanistan and finally finds peace, finally a way to be good again.

The best part about the novel is the sense of repentness, the guilt for redemption, for the coward act and a light of hope now and then but
it is always tinged with sadness and destruction, destruction of the unique and precious friendship.
I wouldn’t call it a sad story but I think one has to read it to experience it. Kudos to Khaled for such a lovely write-up. I think I can finally fill up the Column that asks, Best/favourite books read so far.