The Kite Runner Novel--Not to be Missed!

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
Marcel Proust, 1871 - 1922
http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/3992
Marcel Proust at Wikipedia In_Search_of_Lost_Time

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The Kite Runner

The New York Times Book Review called The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini “Powerful...Haunting. (They continue) This powerful first novel...tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hossrini’s privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before the country’s revolution and its invasion by Russians.” (NYTBR)

Hosseini's novel is a gripping and suspenseful novel about friendship, a novel that contains many sudden, unpredictable developments, right up to the last pages. It also unravels a complex relationship between a father and a son, and between two young friends, set against the physical beauty and cultural splendor of Afghanistan.

Do I recommend this book? Yes, wholeheartedly. Moreover, I look forward to the release of the movie soon. Get the book at our library. You might even like it enough to recommend it to a friend.

--BH

Excerpt reviews from Amazon.com

Amazon.com

In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.
The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

Hosseini's stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s. Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist. But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. After establishing himself in America, Amir learns that the Taliban have murdered Hassan and his wife, raising questions about the fate of his son, Sohrab. Spurred on by childhood guilt, Amir makes the difficult journey to Kabul, only to learn the boy has been enslaved by a former childhood bully who has become a prominent Taliban official. The price Amir must pay to recover the boy is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives. The character studies alone would make this a noteworthy debut, from the portrait of the sensitive, insecure Amir to the multilayered development of his father, Baba, whose sacrifices and scandalous behavior are fully revealed only when Amir returns to Afghanistan and learns the true nature of his relationship to Hassan. Add an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review Excerpts of The Kite Runner at Amazon.com

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A Couple More Links

I have added the Barnes and Noble Internet bookstore link along with already posted links at Amazon and GoHastings and Alibris. This bookstores are not only great places to buy copies of your favorite books, but to find out more information about particular books (as I did with The Kite Runner. The other awesome (a favorite word of our grandson) site for book information is New York Times: Books; to put its value and enjoyment for book information to me into the parlance of some of the younger generation: "it rocks!"

Another site to check out when you have time is America's Story from the Library of Congress, where insights into the story of America await your browsing and clicking for more information (important: don't forget to click for more information occasionally). Another reminder: check out the Library of Congress site as well.

By the way, have you been to The Cranky Librarian (just one of many such sites) where links to entire books exist on line? Would you try to read an entire book on line? Not me. But I might browse small parts of an entire book on line to see if I wanted to borrow it from our library, failing that, borrowing it from another library, and failing that, maybe even buying it, a difficult option these days because lack of book storage room.

By the way, these days we see many advertisements, suggestions, and reminders about Think Green, don't we, ways to reduce our impact on the earth and it's ever-dwindling finite resources. And it makes sense to maximize resource options for the generations yet to follow us.

When buying a book, how might we Think Green? Right; buy a used book, if possible. I know that lots of valid reasons exist for buy only a new book, but if you are "just" going to read it (and not add it to a book collection or give it as a gift), why not Think Green when purchasing your next book at a bookstore or on-line?

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'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it its discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Madluckbooks.blogspot.com
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Wikipedia
© Bob Hoff, 2008