Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Synopsis:
“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime.”
Amir is the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant, a member of the ruling caste of Pashtuns. Hassan, his servant and constant companion, is a Hazara, a despised and impoverished caste. Their uncommon bond is torn by Amir’s choice to abandon his friend amidst the increasing ethnic, religious, and political tensions of the dying years of the Afghan monarchy, wrenching them far apart. But so strong is the bond between the two boys that Amir journeys back to a distant world, to try to right past wrongs against the only true friend he ever had.
This was a book that I picked up from the library as an emergency journey read, when I forgot to take my own book. I had been considering reading it for a while, and when I was browsing the shelves I just thought, “why not?”.
Thank the lord I forgot my book.
The Kite Runner was an absolutely stunning read. Heartbreaking and relevant, it followed Amir’s life journey to defeat his childhood cowardice, and seek redemption.
That is ultimately what his novel is about, but the war riffed setting and the confliction between rich and poor in the Afghani society during the 70’s at the turn of the Russian invasion, right through to the ruling of the Taliban in the 2000’s, make this novel gripping and devasting, uplifting yet shocking, and I honestly can’t stop thinking about it now, even after 3 weeks of reading other books!
Very few books have made me stop in my tracks and truly evaluate the world we are living in, have lived in, or could potentially push ourselves to, and this was one of them.
I found myself wanting to scream at the book, or Amir as a child more specifically, and just shake some sense into him! He wasn’t intentionally cruel to Hassan, but he just didn’t see the effect that his actions, or rather lack of, were having until it was too late. It’s this guilt that drives the rest of the plot, and boy is it action packed!
I laughed, I cried, I felt every emotion possible reading this book, and not one page of it disappointed me. It was truly enthralling,
I’ll definitely be reading more from Hosseini, and I hope that those of you that haven’t read this book yet will feel inspired enough to do so.
View The Kite Runner on Goodreads
In Case Of Bookishness 