The #1 National Bestseller
Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the
present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told
story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in
the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow
up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man,
while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara--a shunned
ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the
eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee
the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has
escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind
him.
The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and about
the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons,
and the power of fathers over sons--their love, their sacrifices, and
their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told
in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and
beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But through the
devastation, Khaled Hosseini offers hope: through the novel's faith in
the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows
us for redemption.
