Name: The Kite Runner
Author : Khaled Hosseini
Pagination: 372
Publication year: 2003
An engaging narrative on how human flaws mark their bearers and how ultimately, the flawed find redemption, Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini tells a vivid tale of the intertwined destinies of two boys : Saint and sinner, pure and very flawed, and the complex, mostly ways they influence the growth,moral/physical destruction and ultimately the redemption of the other.
In a conflict ravaged Afghanistan, Amir, flawed and selfish, finds himself being small and inadequate under his wealthy father’s lens the reason for the denial of his full attention, subsequently his attempts to make himself worthy of an increased amount of paternal love and affection throws him in direct conflict with Hassan, the son of the house servant,whom Amir has struck up a very unequal friendhip with.In Hassan’s perfection, Amir’s inadequacies are harshly thrown into light, with Amir’s father subtle preference of Hassan further exacerbating the issue.The combination of Amir’s resentment of his Father’s absent face to him and the seemingly effortless virtues and talents of Hassan, drive Amir into increasingly more desperate attempts to prove himself worthy of being his father’s son which consequently will precipitate a spiral of unhappy incidents that set against external mishaps and circumstances, will radically change the course of the lives of the two boys forever. Decades later, Amir now a writer in America must come back to his Kabul roots, seeking redemption; to confront the ghosts of his past misdeeds and the secret his father carried and most importantly make redemptive reparations for decades of running away.
A big triumph of this book is its style. Hosseini writes in a faux emotionally restrained manner. The book thrives more on what is not done and what is not said than on what is. Leaving the reader to pay attention to subtle undercurrents always bubbling vigorously below the surface but rarely ever gushing out, Hosseini delivers a powerful narrative that like his other works, exploits the potential of the understatement. Descriptive, but not lingering or tarrying unnecessarily on a point,Hosseini talks of grave issues with a faux air of nonchalance, almost as though he were delivering a weather report while at the same time making sure the gravity of the situation is visibly palpable behind the screen of nonchalance the narration is. The result is a work that comes off as emotionally intelligent without being afflicted by the curse of sentimentality,and is on the overall, one of his more inspired moments and a lovely read.
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