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The Kite Runner is a 2003 novel by Khaled Hosseini that tells the story of friendship and redemption set against the backdrop of Afghanistan's turbulent history. The book explores themes of betrayal, guilt, and the possibility of atonement through the relationship between two boys whose lives diverge dramatically.
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Book · Open Library
- Author
- Khaled Hosseini
- First published
- 2003
- Editions
- 125
- Subjects
- New York Times bestseller, nyt:trade_fiction_paperback=2008-10-26, Male friendship, Betrayal, Fiction, Social classes, Boys, nyt:trade_fiction_paperback=2009-09-26
via Open Library
~25 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Kite Runner is the debut novel of Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it tells the story of Amir, a young Afghan boy from Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, beginning with the collapse of Afghanistan's monarchy and the Afghan conflict that sparked shortly thereafter, with a particular focus on the Soviet–Afghan War and the exodus of Afghan refugees, as well as the rise of the Taliban regime.
Hosseini has commented that he considers The Kite Runner to be a father–son relationship story, emphasizing the familial aspects of the narrative, an element that he continued to use in his later works. Themes of guilt and redemption feature prominently in the novel, with a pivotal scene depicting an act of sexual assault inflicted upon Amir's friend Hassan, which Amir fails to prevent, and which ends their friendship. The latter half of the book centers on Amir's attempts to atone for this transgression by rescuing Hassan's son two decades later.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “The Kite Runner” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.