• 2 of 2 people find this helpful

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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 about the Audio CD edition| Add your feedback

• 1 of 1 person find this helpful

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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

• 1 of 1 person find this helpful

  • 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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  • It was interesting reading about Afghan history and culture, but the plot just seemed too contrived.

    

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• ― Victor B said on Aug 17, 2008 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

“I sat on a bench near a willow tree and watched a pair of kites soaring in the sky. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought, ‘There is a way to be good again.’”

Now in paperback, one of the year’s international literary sensations -- a shattering story of betrayal and redemption set in war-torn Afghanistan.

Amir and Hassan are childhood friends in the alleys and orchards of Kabul in the sunny days before the invasion of the Soviet army and Afghanistan’s decent into fanaticism. Both motherless, they grow up as close as brothers, but their fates, they know, are to be different. Amir’s father is a wealthy merchant; Hassan’s father is his manservant. Amir belongs to the ruling caste of Pashtuns, Hassan to the despised Hazaras.

This fragile idyll is broken by the mounting ethnic, religious, and political tensions that begin to tear Afghanistan apart. An unspeakable assault on Hassan by a gang of local boys tears the friends apart; Amir has witnessed his friend’s torment, but is too afraid to intercede. Plunged into self-loathing, Amir conspires to have Hassan and his father turned out of the household.

When the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father flee to San Francisco, leaving Hassan and his father to a pitiless fate. Only years later will Amir have an opportunity to redeem himself by returning to Afghanistan to begin to repay the debt long owed to the man who should have been his brother.

Compelling, heartrending, and etched with details of a history never before told in fiction, The Kite Runner is a story of the ways in which we’re damned by our moral failures, and of the extravagant cost of redemption.

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