Afghanistan is a divided country, and two childhood friends are about to be torn apart. It is a beautiful afternoon in Kabul and the skies are full of the excitement and joy of a kite flying tournament. But neither of the boys can foresee the incident that will change their lives forever. Told across two decades and two continents, The Kite Runner is an unforgettable journey of forgiveness and shows us all that we can be good again.
* * *
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 descent into fanaticism. Both motherless, they grow up as close as brothers, but their fates 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 divide Afghanistan further. An unspeakable assault on Hassan by a gang of local boys tears the friends apart; and 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.
