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  • I listened to the audio version of this novel shortly after I finished in paperback. I loved learning the pronunciations of some of the words. It was a wonderful audiobook, although it made me uncomfortable at times becasue of the graphicness of the scenes.

    

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• ― SheReads said on Mar 5, 2007 | Add your feedback

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  • This powerful first novel...tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hosseini's privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian fo ... Continue

    This powerful first novel...tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hosseini's privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces. But political events, even as dramatic as the ones that are presented in The Kite Runner, are only a part of this story. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence - forces that continue to threaten them today.

    

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• ― meganzing said on Dec 14, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Riveting...

  • i haven't read any novels for some time and when i started reading this book, i just couldn't put it down. i was deeply moved by what happened to the characters and the author has an uncanny ability to tell stories in such a way that's incredibly vivid and inviting. Great book, and i can't wait to s ... Continue

    i haven't read any novels for some time and when i started reading this book, i just couldn't put it down. i was deeply moved by what happened to the characters and the author has an uncanny ability to tell stories in such a way that's incredibly vivid and inviting. Great book, and i can't wait to see the movie this Fall.

    

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• ― Faithful Father said on Aug 7, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Beautifully written, powerful and compelling throughout, and at times written with such frank brutality some passages will be difficult to get through. But the book had a major flaw for me - the protagonist spends most of the book as weak character and the reader spends most of the book waiting for ... Continue

    Beautifully written, powerful and compelling throughout, and at times written with such frank brutality some passages will be difficult to get through. But the book had a major flaw for me - the protagonist spends most of the book as weak character and the reader spends most of the book waiting for him to "man up." If he had, many of the horrible things that happen in the book could have been avoided completely. And the last 100 pages or so seems to be an unnecessary if-it-can-go-wrong-it-will-go- wrong nightmare. (Which is probably why, after breezing through the book the last bit took me a month and a half to get through.)

    

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• ― Cuzzin Todd said on Jun 1, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Intense read.

    

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• ― SaraA said on May 18, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • I thought this book seriously had no point at all. I got nothing from it, didn't care about any of the characters, and learning next to nothing about Afghanistan. Really really dull book. I am truly shocked by any good reviews on this book.

    

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• ― Deanna Kyre said on Mar 28, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara -- a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and about the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons -- their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But through the devastation, Khaled Hosseini offers hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows us for redemption.

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