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The Kite Runner

Don’t let it’s nearly 2 year run on the Times’ best seller list turn you away. This isn’t The Devil Wears Prada or whatever. What it is, is a series of unfortunate events that takes place as described by the narrator, Amir, focusing on the failed friendship between himself and his best friend.

The politics and history of Afghanistan from the 60’s to the 80’s is weaved well into the narrative, a drama of how Amir leaves Kabul for America after the Russians invade and returns years later to redeem himself. It was a fascinating read on many levels. You find yourself feeling the shame that Afghanistan, like Iran before it, used to be somewhat of an exciting place to explore and travel. While Iran succumbed to mullahs and religious extremism, it managed to survive with a faint glimmer of hope while Afghanistan was partly destroyed by the Russians, then completely ruined by the Taliban and is now in tatters. While I knew the basics of these events, the book made them real and comprehensible.

As to the sections describing Amir’s adolescence in America, it reminded me of other recent immigrant-experience novels like Jumpha Lahiri’s The Namesake and Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex. While the book was well written, it was a bit melodramatic and overly self-conscious in some passages. Things were sometimes spelled out when the author should have left it for the reader to divine for himself, such as the kite symbolism and how the tables are turned on Amir. However, this stuff can be easily overlooked because of the compelling storyline and the continual ups and downs that keep the reader fascinated. At the very least, the author doesn’t wrap everything up at the end in a neat little package, just gives a glimmer of hope to a situation full of damaged people. Read it before Sam Mendes and DreamWorks destroy it with their movie version.