Book Review: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

5 days ago

What hit me first was how Khaled Hosseini writes about Afghanistan. Not just the landscape, but the heartbeat of it—the streets, the markets, the games children played, the smells of food cooking. There’s a tenderness there that made me feel like I was walking through a place that was loved before it was torn apart. And then, woven into that setting, were Amir and Hassan. Their friendship, complicated as it was, felt like the core of the whole book.

The scenes where they are running kites together, those are the ones that made me smile. This lightness, this innocence had in it that when later developments grew darker, it was all the more painful. Hassan had been silent in his allegiance, the manner in which he said, "To thee a thousand times,--god, that had been imprinted in my bosom. It was beautiful and devastating at the same time because I was aware that Amir did not deserve such devotion, not at that time. And that is where the book began to punch me in the gut: seeing Amir fail Hassan, seeing that treachery happen. It was not only an ill scene, but a moment that caused me discomfort, as I was aware of the cowardice and shame, and how silence can be as bloody as blood.

However, here is the point: Hosseini does not allow you to turn look awaymakes you share the guilt of Amir, to live with it, to experience its rottenness and lingering in it well into adulthood. And that is what made this book so strong to me, it was not about an absolute division of past and present. It was the way that the past digs its grave into each nook of your existence till you confront it.

I honestly felt my heart drop a notch when Amir received that call several years later, when he heard, “There is a way to be good again. That line is the compass to the book, you know it is leading you on to redemption, but you are not being reminded that redemption does not come cheap. And as Amir returned, and he confronted the ghosts that he had been fleeing all his life--this was savage. The violence, the danger, how all that comes to a close with the son of Hassan- it had exhausted me, and at the same time, strange in a weird way, optimistic.

The Kite Runner is beautiful in the way it strikes a balance between agony and grace. It is, of course, a betrayal and guilt story, but it is also a love story, a story of forgiveness and the desperate, clingy hope that it is never too late to attempt to do better. Tenderness, moments of tenderness, such as that of the kite running once more at the end, were a small fire in all the darkness. And that was what I kept in mind, the reminder that even the harshest trauma may be able to accommodate the process of healing, provided that you are not afraid to confront it.

It was like my being cracked open reading this book. It caused me to laugh in bursts, it caused me to hurt in long spurts and it caused me to reflect on my own stutterings, when I had not spoken where I ought. And perhaps that is why it remains--because it does not only relate the story of Amir. It is telling you silently to take a look at your own.

Well, in a nutshell, then I would say: The Kite Runner was guttural, spooky yet also human. It is a type of book that would weigh you down, but in a sort of mandatory way such as carrying a scar to remind you of what you should not forget.