The Kite Runner

It's been so long since I read a really good book that I was beginning to wonder why I always list reading as one of my favorite hobbies. I really do enjoy reading, but lately it seems that it's been a struggle just to finish any book that I've started. Nothing that I've read recently has grabbed my attention or made me care about what was on the next page. I was just about to give up on the whole reading thing and just replace it with an overdose of reality television as my hobby of choice.

Thankfully, that changed when I started The Kite Runner, a novel by Khaled Hosseini. This is Hosseini's first published novel, a fact that's hard to believe given that the story is completely captivating and is so well written that it puts many well-established authors to shame.

I bought the book probably six months ago since I had heard some good things about it, but I never had the desire to start it. I just wasn't sure that I'd be able to identify with the characters or care much about the story since I knew it was set in Afghanistan - a country and culture that couldn't be any further removed from my own world.

After finally struggling through and finishing the book I started on our vacation back in May, Tales of the South Pacific, I noticed The Kite Runner high up on all of the best seller lists and getting glowing reviews from seemingly everyone. I'm not sure why it has recently re-emerged as a best seller since it's been out in paperback for a long time already, but I decided I'd give it a shot. Maybe enough time had passed since 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan that I could open up my mind enough to enjoy a story set in that country. Maybe I'd clear away the mental images I had of a dusty, desolate, god-forsaken country inhabited by evil doers with beards and robes who do nothing but sit around hating America and plotting ways to destroy us day in and day out.

It turns out, that mental image was shattered within the first 10 pages or so of the book. The story is about two young boys growing up together in Afghanistan in the days before the Soviet invasion and  dealing with the effects of the multiple wars that ravaged the country since then. It deals with friendship, betrayal, and tragedy, all wrapped in a culture that has always seemed so foreign, but which refreshingly I began to see as so similar to our own. Afghanistan was (and probably still is) plagued by racism and economic divisions much like those we live with here in America - tribe against tribe, Shiite against Sunni, the rich against the poor. And, through it all, ordinary people struggle to live their ordinary lives. In the case of Afghanistan, ordinary people struggled to live their lives under the brutality of the Taliban and their brand of religious extremism - something that, while unimaginably worse than anything we are dealing with or threatened by in America, is related on some level to the wave of religious conservatism and intolerance we're seeing in America today.

The story managed to make me actually care about the characters and I think opened my eyes to a world that may be more like my own than I had ever imagined. It definitely gets a nomination for the So Anyways book of the year award.

Comments

[Scott-O-Rama]

Sounds like a great book. I'll put it on my future "to read" list. Unfortunately that list is really long right now.

Thanks for the review! Hope all is well.

[Beth]

I agree with Scott. It's gong on my future "to read" list as well.