The Kite Runner

Author: Khaled Hosseini

Genre: Human Experience, War, Novel

Summary: A man, living a brand new life in America, receives a phone call from his past, offering him the chance to "be good again". He recollects a childhood lush with innocence and stained with guilt, and goes on a task that will help him seek redemption, perhaps, finally, the correct way.

Review Thoughts: I finished reading this minutes ago, and I am awestruck, and can barely string two sentences together. To begin with, this is one of those books you just have to read, at least once. Calling this a review seems pretentious.

I envy Hassan's faith. I suppose that is one of the reasons the book resounds so deeply, tugs at something deep within, in so many of us. I remember a conversation me and Fably had just a couple of days back, about how, no matter what, we cannot purely, single-mindedly think or even feel honestly, straight forwardly. I called it a social disease, dismissively saying we didn't stand a chance anyway, being born in the times where we have all these tools for communication and connection which just makes as retreat further into our own selves despite us having no idea who we are to begin with. That doesn't make me yearn for it any less, though. I think that is why Amir envies the most in Hassan too. Faith. The unquestionable faith and unconditional love for him. That scares him.

It occurs to me that not only is life is in no way either black or white, it isn't all shades of gray either. What struck me the most when reading it, was how we as people, especially the characters are all painted with their own colors throughout. We are who we are, and maybe we as people don't change, despite what changes we go through and endure. Even if people change, they are still who they are, and yet, they do change, and significantly, because that is life. It's something that's unquestionably going to happen. The way life goes on and we change with it, and we live, seeking our own redemption from our own failings through out our lives.

Another thing that struck a chord was how it was so similar and yet so different from all the things I knew, grew up believing, lived in. The descriptions of the actual Afghan culture and the people, makes you fall in love with it, mourn for how it, how they themselves have been shattered and broken and reduced to rubble like the streets.  Their society is different from where I grew up in, but there are similarities, food that I've heard of and eaten, customs that even we follow or at least know of, words I can pick out from Hindi, words used even in Dhivehi, that makes me all too aware of the proximity, and honestly, it makes me very very afraid.

That's the thing with the book. It is horrifying and my heart weeps for all they have to go through, at the hands of the dirty, ugly side of human nature. But it still shows the beauty and the pureness of the human heart, how there are second chances, and third chances after that and how there is life, and there is hope.

Rating: 10/10

Quotes:

We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.

Mine was Baba.

His was Amir. My name.

Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975 - and all that followed - was already laid in those first words.

~ Amir

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~ songstories ~

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Note: This is part of my extended reading for lit before I pick a theme for my final coursework (it's already way too late, I know), so I will think of and sort out major themes and issues presented, and the linguistic techniques used by the author, and other whatnots of importance. Later.