The Kite Runner (Riverhead Essential Editions)

The Kite Runner (Riverhead Essential Editions)
by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner (Riverhead Essential Editions)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Khaled Hosseini
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-06
ISBN: 1594481776
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Riverhead Trade

Summary of The Kite Runner (Riverhead Essential Editions)

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and it is also about the power of fathers over sons?their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner tells a sweeping story of family, love, and friendship against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, bringing to mind the large canvases of the Russian writers of the nineteenth century. But just as it is old-fashioned in its narration, it is contemporary in its subject?the devastating history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years. As emotionally gripping as it is tender, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful debut.

PICTURE A BOOK CHANGING LIVES. NOW MAKE IT HAPPEN. Starting June 15, 2010 through August 31, 2010, visit this campaign page and join the ?Hosseini? group--and find out how you can make a difference!

Watch a video about the campaign here:



Watch a video from Khaled Hosseini introducing his online book group discussion where readers can ask him questions through his website here:

View a video for The Kite Runner and learn more about The American Place Theatre's Literature to Life adaptation here.

Read about how Penguin Group (USA) built a school, grades one through six, honoring American booksellers, libr...


In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg

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