The Kite Runner

Loyalty is an attitude of devotion, faithfulness and affection. In the novel The kite runner Loyalty is a prominent theme throughout. There are signs of loyalty between a few characters but the main ones concerning Hassan and Amir . Hassan comes from a rough social background, lacks education and is the main victim of disloyalty by Amir however he was the character who portrayed loyalty the most. Amir is constantly putting Hassans loyalty to the test.

He asks him if he would chew dirt and Hassan answers him in saying that if he was asked to then yes he would but he challenges Amirs loyalty at the same time in saying “ but I wonder, would you ever ask me to do such a thing amir agha” . Hassan shows loyalty to Amir when he admits to stealing his watch and his money. He knew all along that Amir wanted to get rid of him and Ali however being the loyal servant and friend he was he admits to a crime which he did not commit for Amirs sake . he does this To ensure Baba does not see Amir as a liar.

The main incident which proves the magnitude of Hassans loyalty towards Amir was when Amir watched Hassan get raped but did nothing to stop it. And although Hassan endured the most traumatic experience of his life he remains loyal to Amir and disregards the fact that he witnessed the entire scenario. He ignores Amirs sinful actions and instead asks if HE had done something wrong. Throughout his life, Amir is haunted by the disloyalty with which he has always treated Hassan, especially since Hassan had always been unquestionably loyal to him.

Little things like hand washed and ironed clothes neatly placed on the chair and the wood already burning at breakfast time reminds Amir of Hassans continuous loyalty and causes him extreme guilt Hassan even dies a loyal man by resisting the Taliban when they came to take possession of Babas house. Amir finally gets the opportunity to change his life for the better and for a change demonstrate his faithfulness towards Hassan after his death.

By Amir making a dangerous trip back to Afghanistan to rescue and raise Hassan’s son -Sohrab from the Taliban is a prime example of returning his loyalty to Hassan . Amir flies kites with sorab and tells him how hassan was the best kite flyer. He develops a close relationship with sorab and treats him as if he were his own son. He truly wants the best for Sorab and he is finally given the opportunity to be as loving and loyal as Hassan once was

The effects of this remaining unnamed makes us concentrate on what the narrator is introducing us to. He is the central character of this story is coloured by Amir’s personal reactions and emotions. It opens with “I became what I am today” and ending with the same focus. The result of this referring back to the first line exposes a situation that has happened between the past and the present. It has changed him in a substantial way.

Hosseini doesn’t let us know what has made him his way but he alludes this with the imagery and brief information of the past of which Amir already foreshadows, building dramatic tension. Hosseini uses dates to open the story “December 2001” to locate the present as he immediately refers back to the past in flashbacks. We know this because he says “in the winter of 1975”. It’s been twenty-six years since the event that he has been referring back to, so there has been time for Amir to think everything over. Hosseini uses pathetic fallacy to open the story “on a frigid overcast” which mirrors the mood of the character and the scene.

The imagery of this helps us understand that something unpleasant has happened because of the weather is also unpleasant. Flashbacks mostly fill the whole story underlining that somewhere after the event, Amir already knows what has happened which he is telling us. In chapter 1, we are immediately pulled back to a more recent time “last summer” where he got a call from Rahim Khan from Pakistan. He knew it wasn’t Rahim Khan but his “un-atoned sins” of his past. The call from the past makes it seems like something dead coming after him. In the first paragraph in chapter 1, the past is personified.

Amir can “bury it” but it “claws it’s way out” like the call, he can’t hide from the past as it comes to haunt him. Hosseini uses personification to exaggerate the past of Amir that invokes imagery of something dead rising from it’s grave. It also shows that Amir has been hiding from his past but on this very day, he can’t really escape from it. Back into the present Amir takes a walk at the Northern edge Golden Gate park, San Francisco where he saw 2 blue kites which reminded him of Afghanistan, his past. The juxtaposition is clear here of USA and Afghanistan which are two very opposing countries.

A city with a Golden Gate Bridge with miniature boats in the lake. At night, sparkling lights cover the bridge. Compared to the memories of Afghanistan now war torn, corrupt and run by the Taliban. Hosseini purposely displays this juxtaposition to reveal the massive differences between them. Hosseini introduces Hassan as “the harelipped kite runner” This identifies Hassan as the Kite Runner of the title showing the significance of this character against all the other characters been mentioned. He also mentions kites in the story reinforcing the Novel’s Title; The Kite Runner.

The effect of him seeing these kites is what triggers his memories of Afghanistan and Hassan. Hassan’s voice is heard by Amir “For you, A thousand times over”. Hassan would do anything for Amir. Hosseini shows this to represent his kindness and how Amir feels about him, portraying comradeship. The language that Hosseini uses in chapter one is informal mimicking a real life person in the story. This is also a reflection of a biographical fictive story as the character is going through his life in flashbacks which are embedded for the stories to come.

An after thought comes into Amir’s mind from the phone call “There’s a way to be good again” the phone call being displayed as the past that is claws it’s way out and then the call saying there’s a way to be good again makes us think of his sins he’s left behind that needs to be atoned. It displays the narrator as guilty and sorry for his past. Also, it invokes the theme of this story of Redemption and something that revolves around his friend, Hassan. Hosseini writes chapter 1 short and brief but sets the scenes, dates and introduces characters. Also, addressing the massive themes played throughout of this story.

Kite Runner The purpose of this research paper : I want to highlight the effect of the readers of the novel about Taliban and to have another thought about Afghanistan . Also to show how Housseini’s succeeded in showing a new trend of New Orientalism to prove to the west how Muslims are not bad after 9/11 or as they described Muslims as terrorists . Introduction : A brief introduction about the novel and the current affairs of the country . Main body : ( will tackle a few main themes + giving evidence from the novel ) * The theme Discrimination: Afghanistan has many ethnic groups, like Hazaras and Pashtuns.

How the main character suffers from this, the most famous incident is the Hazara massacre in 1998. * Oppression as a theme : 1. The oppression of women in society 2. The oppression of children (Hassan , his son , director of the orphanage ) 3. The oppression of the Russian colonizer against Afghanistan and the people. * The theme of Diaspora ; it tackles the life of the main characters when he goes to America and escape from the bad fortune of his country had been to. * The theme of war between Soviet and Afghanistan. A.

How the Afghani people see the war . B. How the Roussi treat them ( the incident of baba with the Russian doctor – the Russian solider and the harassment of the Afghani woman) C. The destruction of the country Conclusion : How khaled housseini presented a new trend of new orientalism as many criticized that he had succeeded in giving a good presentation for his country. References and Sources : The New York Times – articles Wiki pedia pages about Taliban – Afghanistan – The Soviet War The Goodreads website – quotes by Ahmed Rashid

Comparing and Contrasting Works by Kundera and Khaled Hosseini The unbearable lightness of being was published in Paris in 1984 by Czech author Milan Kundera. The novel is a mix of genre-defying mix of historical fiction, love stories, philosophy, and experimentation with narrative technique. Set mostly in Prague in the late 1960s, the novel focuses on the love lives of four Czech intellectuals as they struggle with relationships, sex, politics, and the military occupation of their country.

The narrator frequently interrupts the story to analyze his own characters and discuss the fictional plotline in the context of the novel’s central philosophy: the dichotomy between lightness and weight. On the contrary of The Kite Runner, the book was published in New York in 2003 by Afghanistan author Khaled Hosseini. The novel is a work of post- modern literature telling the story of how the author grew up and the relationship he had with one of his servant boys. However the similarity here is the Kite Runner is also written about a time of war for its country while telling the story of the two boys.

The author Kundera is unique narrative by presenting himself in the third person, suggesting that he is a character in the story. But he soon confesses to be the author, not the spectator of the fictional tales. He actually proceeds to comment on the characters his own fictional creations and analyze his own novel for us. What he trying to do which we cannot do in real life is disrupts the linearity of time by telling a non-chronological narrative. He achieves this by repeating the same scenes a second or third time. The novel explores the human struggle to give our lives weight despite its necessary and unbearable lightness.

The novel itself is the narrator’s attempt at doing just that for himself. Contrary to Khaled is writing is Classical and he speaks as the author telling a story. He also allows the character themselves to define who they are. He does not disrupt the time of telling a chronological narrative. He allows the characters to feel the actually weight of their lives like real life. There is a quote in Kundera book “novelistic” to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as “fictive,” “fabricated,” and “untrue to life” into the word “novelistic. Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. ” (Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being) both authors are similar in that even though Kundera uses fictional characters and Khaled using real characters. Kundera is saying it is his way of using fictional novel and fictional characters to explore real ideas. Just because my characters are fake, he seems to be saying, doesn’t mean that they aren’t a completely accurate reflection of real life. His novel may be intricately structure and full of artistry but so is life. The novels are different when it comes to the plot.

Khaled, follows a typical plotline. Khaled uses his characters to serves as the climax as a whole in the story. The events are placed in chronological order. Kundera, on the other hand no typical plotline, the novel features several different, interwoven, plotlines. If you identify a climactic situation for one character in one plotline, it doesn’t necessarily serve as a climax for the plot as a whole. The reason the same events are narrated more than once from different characters’ points of view. You can’t break this story into purely plot-driven stages.

The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina’s life. It return again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the hat like water. “You can’t step twice into the same river” (Kundera, Milan) Sabina was touched by the sight of the bowler hat in a Zurich hotel and made love almost in tears was that its black presence was not merely a reminder of their love games but also a memento of Sabina’s father and of her grandfather, who lived in a century without airplanes and cars.

The bowler hat carries weight primarily because it has recurred. This is exactly why motifs give meaning to an individual’s life because they recur over and over again. This is how we are able to give our lives meaning despite the fact that our life occurs only once. The kite was a motif in Amir’s life. It returns season after season and each time with different meaning. All the meanings flowed like the quote mention above. Amir’s longed for the kite runner contest because it was a chance for him to bond and make his father proud of him. The kite recurs over and over every year.

This kite running gave him the chance to make his father finally proud of him when he won the contest that last year before war and things change between him and Hassan. Many years later the kite comes back to help him to reach his nephew. This like Sabina gave his life meaning despite the fact he lives only once. Both books show betrayal from one character to the other. In the Kite Runner Amir betrays Hassan on more than one occasion we see it when he was raped by Assef and the other boys. We see it when he places the money and some gifts under his pillow and tries to convince his father that he stole the items.

Tomas betrays Tereza by making all his sexual life to so many women, he makes he and Tereza’s private life public. He violates her privacy. Tereza reads Tomas’s letters. Sabina betrays Tomas when she takes his sock and hides it so he will go home with one sock short. This made Tomas realize Sabina resents his love for Tereza as much as Tereza resents his lust for Sabina. In the book by Khaled there is a quote “For you a thousand times over” (Hosseini) Hassan used this quote to show his devotion to Amir and that there was nothing he would not do for his friend and master, yet unknowingly to him also his brother.

His thousand times over was shown when he went after the kite for Amir and it cost him being raped and shamed. At the end of the story you have Amir using the same quote as he and Hassan’s son Sohrab are flying the kite and he noticed a slight nod and smile come across his face. He knew there was no great big change but like spring when it comes it melts the snow one flake at a time; he thought he might have just witnessed the first flake melting.

Just like Hassan Tereza would show Tomas “For you a thousand times over” (Kundera) her devotion and love for him. Even though he cheated on her many times over she stayed with him. She believed he was her soul mate that was why she went to Prague to offer up her life to Tomas. Tomas himself was faithful to Tereza in that he would not let anyone possess a special area which he might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.

Since meeting Tereza he did not allow a woman to leave the slightest impression on that part of his brain. Hosseini, Khaled. “The Kite Runner. ” Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Penguin Group, 2003. 371. Novel. Kundera, Milan. “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. ” Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. New York: harperCollins, 1984. 88. Novel. Kundera, Milan. “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. ” Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. 59. Novel.

Journal Responses 11/2/12 The passage “… they in turn opened into an extension of the driveway into my father’s estate” uses a key word in the phrase, “estate”. Some synonyms of the word estate are; land, park, parkland, manor. The connotation we could make is that the author used this word to sound elegant and give the Hassan’s family a rich outlook on what they are compared to other families in afghan. The passage “… a new and affluent neighborhood in the northern part of Kabul. Some thought it was the prettiest house in all of Kabul. Can present how Amir and his father are very proud of themselves. The author wanted to show that Amir and his father were one of the richer and wealthier in the city. He may also wanted to show that they stand out from the rest of the people of the city. Therefore Amir and his Father are characterized as the upper class of Kabul. “you! The hazara! ” what I further remember from the movie afghan star is that all the ethnic groups were fighting back where they were from. But all of the 4 different ethnics singing it had seemed to bring them together in a sense of unity.

Yes, The Hazaras are disrespected more than the other ethnic groups. This is almost like them picking on the most weakest person which in this case is hazara. The passage “… they in turn opened into an extension of the driveway into my father’s estate” uses a key word in the phrase, “estate”. Some synonyms of the word estate are; land, park, parkland, manor. The connotation we could make is that the author used this word to sound elegant and give the Hassan’s family a rich outlook on what they are compared to other families in afghan.

Eric Richardson Ms. Pierce Journal Responses 11/2/12 Chapter four response. Why doesn’t Amir accept Hassan as a good friend? What doesn’t make sense to me is why does Hassan do all this stiff for Amir and not get anything in return even tho he is always there for him. For example when Hassan read Amir a story then he asked a question, when Amir was thinking about something mean to say about Hassan being a hazara. Amir doesn’t seem to have respect for anyone and I think it will come back to haunt him.

The Kite Runner is a novel by Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it is Hosseini’s first novel, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007. The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, whose closest friend is Hassan, his father’s young Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan’s monarchy through the Soviet invasion, the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime. Plot summary Part I

Amir, a well-to-do Pashtun boy, and Hassan, a Hazara who is the son of Ali, Amir’s father’s servant, spend their days in the hitherto peaceful city of Kabul, kite fighting. Amir’s father, a wealthy merchant, whom Amir affectionately refers to as Baba, loves both boys, but is often more harshly critical of Amir, considering him weak and lacking in courage. Amir finds a kinder fatherly figure in Rahim Khan, Baba’s closest friend. Khan understands Amir and supports his interest in writing. Amir explains that his first word was ‘Baba’ and Hassan’s ‘Amir’, suggesting that Amir looks up most to Baba, while Hassan looks up to Amir.

Assef, a notorious sociopath and violent older boy, mocks Amir for socializing with a Hazara, which is, according to Assef, an inferior race whose members belong only in Hazarajat. One day, he prepares to attack Amir with stainless-steel brass knuckles, but Hassan bravely stands up to him, threatening to shoot out Assef’s eye out with his slingshot. Assef and his posse back off, but Assef threatens revenge. Hassan is a successful “kite runner” for Amir, knowing where the kite will land without watching it. One triumphant day, Amir wins the local tournament, and finally Baba’s praise.

Hassan runs for the last cut kite, a great trophy, saying to Amir, “For you, a thousand times over. ” Unfortunately, Hassan encounters Assef in an alleyway after finding the kite. Hassan refuses to give up Amir’s kite, and Assef decides to teach Hassan a lesson. He beats him severely and then anally rapes him. Amir witnesses the act but is too scared to intervene. Secretly, he also knows that if he intervenes, he might not be able to bring the kite home; therefore, Baba would be less proud of him. After witnessing this brutal act against his dearest friend, he feels incredibly guilty, but knows that his owardice would destroy any hopes for Baba’s affections, so he tells no one what he saw. Afterward, Amir keeps a distance from Hassan, his guilt preventing him from interacting with the boy. Jealous of Baba’s love for Hassan, Amir worries that if Baba found out about Hassan’s bravery and his own cowardice, Baba’s love for Hassan would grow even more. Amir, filled with guilt on his birthday, cannot enjoy his gifts. The only present that does not feel like “blood” money is the notebook to write his stories in given to him by Rahim Khan, his father’s friend and the only one Amir felt really understood him.

Amir feels life would be easier if Hassan were not around, so he plants a watch and some money under Hassan’s mattress in hopes that Baba will make him leave; Hassan falsely confesses when confronted by Baba. Baba forgives him, despite the fact that, as he explains earlier, he believes that “there is no act more wretched than stealing. ” Hassan and Ali, to Baba’s extreme sorrow, leave anyway. It is clear that Ali knows about Hassan’s rape. Their leaving frees Amir of the daily reminder of his cowardice and betrayal, but he still lives in the shadow of these things. Part II

Five years later, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan in 1979. Amir and Baba escape to Peshawar, Pakistan and then to Fremont, California, where Amir and Baba, who lived in luxury in an expensive mansion in Afghanistan, settle in a run-down apartment and Baba begins work at a gas station. Amir eventually takes classes at a local community college to develop his writing skills after graduating from high school at age twenty. Every Sunday, Baba and Amir make extra money selling used goods at a flea market in San Jose. There, Amir meets fellow refugee Soraya Taheri and her family.

Soraya’s father, General Taheri, once a high-ranking officer in Afghanistan, has contempt for Amir’s literary aspiration. Baba is diagnosed with terminal small cell carcinoma but is still capable of granting Amir one last favor: he asks Soraya’s father’s permission for Amir to marry her. He agrees and the two marry. Shortly thereafter Baba dies. Amir and Soraya settle down in a happy marriage, but to their sorrow they learn that they cannot have children. Amir embarks on a successful career as a novelist. Fifteen years after his wedding, Amir receives a call from Rahim Khan, who is dying from an illness.

Rahim Khan asks Amir to come to Peshawar, Pakistan. He enigmatically tells Amir, “There is a way to be good again. ” Amir goes. Part III From Rahim Khan, Amir learns the fates of Ali and Hassan. Ali was killed by a land mine. Hassan had a wife named Farzana and a son named Sohrab. He had lived in a village near Bamiyan, but returned to Baba’s house as a caretaker at Rahim Khan’s request, although he moved to a hut in the yard so as not to dishonor Amir by taking his place in the house. During his stay, his mother Sanaubar returned after a long search for him, and died after four years.

One month after Rahim Khan left for Pakistan, the Taliban ordered Hassan to give up the house and leave, but he refused, and was executed, along with Farzana. Rahim Khan reveals that Ali was not really Hassan’s father, that Ali was sterile, and that Hassan was actually Baba’s son, and therefore Amir’s half-brother. Finally, Rahim Khan tells Amir that the true reason he called Amir to Pakistan was to rescue Sohrab from an orphanage in Kabul. Rahim Khan asks Amir to bring Sohrab to Thomas and Betty Caldwell, who own an orphanage.

Amir becomes furious; he feels cheated because he had not known that Hassan was his half-brother. Amir finally relents and decides to go to Kabul to get Sohrab. He travels in a taxi with an Afghan driver named Farid, a veteran of the war with the Soviets, and stays as a guest at Farid’s brother Wahid’s house. Farid, initially hostile to Amir, is sympathetic when he hears of Amir’s true reason for returning, and offers to accompany him on his journey. Amir searches for Sohrab at the orphanage. To enter Taliban territory, clean shaven Amir wears a fake beard and mustache.

However, Sohrab is not at the orphanage; its director tells them that a Taliban official comes often, brings cash, and usually takes a girl away with him. Once in a while however, he takes a boy, recently Sohrab. The director tells Amir to go to a soccer match, where the procurer makes speeches at half-time. Farid secures an appointment with the speaker at his home, by claiming to have “personal business” with him. At the house, Amir meets the man, who turns out to be Assef. Assef recognizes Amir from the outset, but Amir does not recognise Assef until he asks about Ali, Baba, and Hassan.

Sohrab is being kept at Assef’s home where he is made to dance dressed in women’s clothes, and it seems Assef may have raped him. Assef agrees to relinquish him, but only for a price;cruelly beating Amir. However, Amir is saved when Sohrab uses his slingshot to shoot out Assef’s left eye, fulfilling Hassan’s threat made many years before. While at a hospital treating his injuries, Amir asks Farid to find information about Thomas and Betty Caldwell. When Farid returns, he tells Amir that the American couple does not exist.

Amir tells Sohrab of his plans to take him back to America and possibly adopt him, and promises that he will never be sent to an orphanage again. However, US authorities demand evidence of Sohrab’s orphan status. After decades of war, this is all but impossible to get in Afghanistan. Amir tells Sohrab that he may have to temporarily break his promise until the paperwork is completed. Upon hearing this, Sohrab attempts suicide. Amir eventually takes him back to the United States without an orphanage, and introduces him to his wife. However, Sohrab is emotionally damaged and refuses to speak to or even glance at Soraya.

His frozen emotions eventually thaw when Amir reminisces about Hassan and kites. Amir shows off some of Hassan’s tricks, and Sohrab begins to interact with Amir again. In the end Sohrab only shows a lopsided smile, but Amir takes to it with all his heart as he runs the kite for Sohrab, saying, “For you, a thousand times over. ” Characters Amir is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He was born in 1963, and his mother died giving birth. He is a Pashtun. As a child, Amir delighted himself with storytelling and was encouraged by Rahim Khan to become an author.

At age eighteen, he and his father fled to America following the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, where Amir pursues his dream of being a writer. Hassan is Amir’s closest childhood friend. He is described as having a China doll face, green eyes, and a harelip. The reader eventually discovers that Hassan is actually the son of Baba and Sanaubar, although Hassan never knows this during his lifetime. Hassan was later shot by the Taliban led by Mohammed Omar for refusal to abandon Amir’s property. Assef is the main antagonist of the novel.

He is the son of an Afghan father and a German mother and ironically, given that he is of mixed origin, an advocate of Pashtun dominance over the Hazara. As a teenager, he is a neighborhood bully and is described as a “sociopath” by Amir. Many of his cruel actions as a child include raping Hassan as a means of revenge against Amir, and giving Amir a biography of Adolf Hitler as a birthday present. As an adult, he joins the Taliban and rapes and abuses Hassan’s son Sohrab. Baba is Amir’s father and a wealthy businessman who aids the community by creating businesses for others and building a new orphanage.

He is also the biological father of Hassan, a secret he takes to the grave. Baba is born in 1933 . According to legend, he won in a fight with a black bear in his younger years. Believing that sin could be explained as a form of stealing from one’s fellow man, he does not endorse the religiosity demanded by the clerics in the religion classes attended by Amir in school. Baba is disappointed in his son Amir, whom he wishes to be as manly as he is, and appears to favor Hassan. In his later years after fleeing to America, he works at a gas station.

He dies from cancer in 1987, shortly after Amir and Soraya’s wedding. Ali is Baba’s servant, a Hazara believed to be Hassan’s father. In his youth, Baba’s father adopted him after his parents were killed by a drunk driver. Before the events of the novel, Ali had been struck with polio, rendering his right leg useless. Because of this, Ali was constantly tormented by children in the town. He was killed by a land mine in Hazarajat. Rahim Khan is Baba’s loyal friend and business partner, as well as a mentor to Amir. Rahim convinces Amir to come to Pakistan by saying “there is a way to be good again. He eventually tells Amir that Hassan is his half brother, and that he should save Sohrab. He dies peacefully knowing he has successfully made Amir the man Baba wanted him to be. Soraya is a young Afghan woman whom Amir meets in America. She lives with her parents, Afghan general Taheri and his wife. She meets Amir at a flea market and later marries him. Soraya wants to become an English teacher. Before meeting Amir, she ran away with an Afghan boyfriend in Virginia, which, according to Afghan tradition, made her unsuitable for marriage. Because Amir also had his own regrets, he loved and married her anyway.

Soraya wants to have children but cannot because of “unexplained infertility”. Sohrab is the son of Hassan. After his parents are killed and he is sent to an orphanage, Assef buys him and physically abuses the child. Amir saves him, and then is saved by Sohrab in a pivotal confrontation. He is later adopted by Amir and Soraya, where he adapts to his new life. Sohrab greatly resembles a young version of his father Hassan. Sanaubar is Ali’s wife and the mother of Hassan. Shortly after Hassan’s birth, she runs away from home and becomes a gypsy. She later returns to Hassan in his adulthood.

To make up for her neglect she provided a grandmother figure for Sohrab, Hassan’s son. Farid is a taxi driver who is initially abrasive toward Amir, but later befriends him. Two daughters of Farid’s seven children were killed by a land mine, a disaster which mutilated three fingers on his left hand and also took some of his toes. After spending a night with Farid’s brother’s impoverished family, Amir hides a bundle of money under the mattress to help them: the secretive act once committed to hurt his friend Hassan, he now does to help someone he barely knows.

General Taheri is the father of Soraya. General Taheri lives mainly off welfare, considering himself too good for ordinary work. He is always waiting for a call to be restored to his former position as a high-ranking general in Kabul, which he eventually receives at the end of the novel, after the fall of the Taliban. Khala/Khanum Jamila is Soraya’s mother, who lovingly accepts Amir into her family. She sees Amir as someone who could “do no wrong in her eyes. ” Farzana is Hassan’s wife and Sohrab’s mother, a shy Hazara who is later shot to death by the Taliban.

Reception The Kite Runner received the South African Boeke Prize in 2004. It was the first 2005 best seller in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan. It was also voted the Reading Group Book of the Year for 2006 and 2007 and headed a list of 60 titles submitted by entrants to the Penguin/Orange Reading Group prize . Controversies The Kite Runner has been accused of hindering Western understanding of the Taliban by portraying Taliban members as representatives of various social and doctrinal evils not typically attributed to the Taliban .

The American Library Association reports that The Kite Runner is one of its most-challenged books of 2008, with multiple attempts to remove it from libraries due to “offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group. ” Afghanistan’s Ministry of Culture banned the film from distribution in cinemas or DVD stores, citing the possibility that the movie’s ethnically charged rape scene could incite racial violence within Afghanistan. Adaptations The Kite Runner was published in 2003 and in 2007 adapted as a motion picture tarring Khalid Abdalla, Homayoun Ershadi, and Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada . Directed by Marc Forster and with a screenplay by David Benioff, the movie won numerous awards and was nominated for an Oscar, the BAFTA Film Award and the Critics Choice Award . However, Manhola Dargis of the New York Times states that “The back of my paperback copy of this Khaled Hosseini novel is sprinkled with words like ‘powerful’ and ‘haunting’ and ‘riveting’ and ‘unforgettable’. It’s a good guess this film will be rolled around in a similarly large helping of lard. The novel was also adapted to the stage by Bay Area playwright Matthew Spangler. It was performed at San Jose State University in March 2007 and two years later at San Jose Repertory Theatre, where David Ira Goldstein directed a cast that included Barzin Akhavan, Demosthenes Chrysan, Gregor Paslawsky, James Saba, Thamos Fiscelle, Craig Piaget, Lowell Abellon, Rinabeth Apostol, Adam Yazbeck, Zarif Kabier Sadiqi, Wahab Shayek, and Lani Carissa Wong, with Salar Nader also onstage playing tabla.

The play was subsequently produced at Arizona Theatre Company, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Play House, and The New Repertory Theatre of Watertown, Massachusetts . See also A Thousand Splendid Suns Kite Runner The Kite Runner 16 Days in Afghanistan – referenced film. Bibliography Hosseini,Khaled. The Kite Runner. Anchor Canada: Toronto, 2004. ISBN 978-0-385-66007-5 References External links on the BBC World Book Club Excerpts: by The San Francisco Chronicle Bibliography: Wikipedia @baygross