Review: The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had wanted to read this book for a long time ever since I read "A Thousand Splendid Suns" but never gotten around it. Finally I got hold of this and completed it. This is one book which is written straight from the heart. I believe this is one of the most beautiful book ever written and should be up there in the list of greatest books ever written.

This is about a tale of friendship between the rich kid Amir and his servant's son Hassan. They spend most of their time together in Kabul which was beautiful and untouched by war once upon a time. But this friendship is betrayed by one which creates a rift between the two and eventually they have to get separated from one another. Amir and his father has to flee Afghanistan after the Russians capture Afghanistan. This is an extremely emotional heart-rending story of how both lives turn out to be during those tumultuous ensuing years.

People looking for a description of Afghani culture or a history of Taliban or Afghanistan would be disappointed. The author has not delved much into how the Afghanistan has turned into one of the most dangerous spots on the world map. The state of the country in 1990s is described so well that it almost brings tears to the eyes and you wonder how mankind could be so cruel to one another. This is a story of friendship, betrayal, guilt, remorse and redemption narrated beautifully in a prose which almost feels like poetry.

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