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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780747594888
Edition: Film tie-in edition
ISBN: 0747594880
Label: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: December 17, 2007
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Studio: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Editorial Review:Amazon.co.uk Review:The
Kite Runner of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.
Narrated by Amir, a 40-year-old novelist living in California,
The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English,
The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.
The son of an Afghan diplomat whose family received political asylum in the United States in 1980, Hosseini combines the unflinching realism of a war correspondent with the satisfying emotional pull of master storytellers such as Rohinton Mistry. Like the kite that is its central image, the story line of this mesmerizing first novel occasionally dips and seems almost to dive to the ground. But Hosseini ultimately keeps everything airborne until his heartrending conclusion in an American picnic park.
--Lisa Alward, Amazon.ca
Average Rating:
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I instantly fell in love with the characters and was deeply moved by the story. I usually read on the train and did not expect to cry my eyes out with this one; but I did.
Rating:
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A very emotionally charged book. Enjoyed and hated at the same time. Well worth a read
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Here's a book everyone should read. No exception. Please do so.
I was totally taken by this book, cried a couple of times whilst reading it and even sometime after i had finished it i still remembered the characters so well. Haunting but oh so worth it!
A must have in you own private collection of books, even if its a small one.
I have also read 1000 splendid suns. top book too! waiting for Khaled's next book... please hurry!!!
Rating:
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Good, exciting first half of the book. The plot disappoints around the time Baba dies. Surely there's more to come, but I'm afraid I'm not going to plough through the poorly edited middle of the book to get to the better end I'm afraid. Quite disappointed overall.
Why is this book so popular?
Rating:
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It's hard to imagine how someone could call saccharine a book that contains genocide, adultery, pedophilia, rape, and any number of other atrocities, but there you have it, if this book has one quality it is its ability to somehow render all of these actions in a sentimental light. It is an amazing feat, if albeit an unintentional one.
From the get-go this book had rubbed me the wrong way for some reason I couldn't quite place. I'm not squeamish, I don't flinch from gritty renditions, ...
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