The Kite Runner Book Review

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Once again we had good news to start our book club meeting. L-, the hostess for the evening, announced her engagement to her long time beloved. It was about time! I think we all had been waiting for that one.

We were all pretty excited to talk about The Kite Runner. Many of us agreed that this was by far the best book we had read this year. First of all, it was so well written in first person that a few of our members had thought it was an actual memoir. When I said that this was actually a work of fiction, a few of them looked completely surprised! I had read the author's autobiography. He had obviously pulled from his own life as far as growing up in Afghanistan and moving to California before the wars. The author, Khaled Hosseini, is actually a doctor and this is his very first novel.

When I began reading The Kite Runner, I had also assumed it was nonfiction. I am not sure why. It seemed so real, so personal. Of course I made the connection that the author's name and the name of the main character were not the same, but I imagined that perhaps his name had changed upon entrance to the U.S. Still, I had to find out and looked him up. I wanted to find pictures and clues. Mr. Hosseini made me very interested in who he really was, I wanted to know everything about him. When I realized the book was a work of fiction, well....I had all that much more respect for the man. He did an incredible job making The Kite Runner feel real and true.

I rarely get emotional when I read. However, I began to cry while reading The Kite Runner. At our book club, I brought up an emotional scene when Amir found out that he could get a Visa for Sohrab. As he hung up the phone and walked into the bathroom he was devastated by the scene he saw before him. I burst into tears at this point and started yelling. Again the book has tricked me into thinking this was real for my emotions were completely real and very attached to the characters within the book. I was crying and yelling at the book and begging for a positive outcome. When a book reaches this deep within you and pulls at your heartstrings, it has to be a good book.

Another positive point about The Kite Runner (there are MANY, but I must keep it at a minimum) is that it helps American readers to see a different perspective of the Afghan people. You see them before the war starts, when Afghanistan is a civil nation rich with culture and diversity. You see them struggling with wars and you learn how the Taliban manages to seize control in the wake of the Russian invasion. It was not a nation of hate, it was a nation taken over by hate, while the majority of the Afghan people hoped for a better fate. Many left, many died, many stayed and feared for their lives. Many came to America. With our own country's invasion in Afghanistan, The Kite Runner should be read by all who wish for a better understanding of just what went wrong. And people need to understand that most Afghanis are good people, innocent and respectful. We all agreed that learning about their culture was also most intriguing!

The Kite Runner centers around a young man and his relationship to his best friend who falls in a lower class of people. It is more of a 'coming of age' book rather than a book on the political strife of Afghanistan. However, the state of things and how they affect Amir's relationship to Hassan, his best friend, sheds light on the people and culture which surrounds them.

If the reader of this review is to choose any book to read, I must insist on it being The Kite Runner. You won't regret it.

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