The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

The book was fantastic and at some points hard to swallow (***spoiler: one rape scene***). I recommend the book for sure, especially when you tend to avoid news about Afghanistan. I like to read about other cultures in novels so the news make more sense. Anyone else does the same? This was a wonderful book discussion. We even had a girl who lived in Afghanistan for a while, which made it even more interesting.

"The Kite Runner," a beautiful novel by Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini that ranks among the best-written and provocative stories of the year so far.

Hosseini's first novel -- and the first Afghan novel to be written originally in English -- "The Kite Runner" tells a heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between Amir, the son of a wealthy Afghan businessman, and Hassan, the son of his father's servant. Amir is Sunni; Hassan is Shi'a. One is born to a privileged class; the other to a loathed minority. One to a father of enormous presence; the other to a crippled man. One is a voracious reader; the other illiterate.

The poor Hassan is born with a hare lip, but Amir's gaps are better hidden, deep inside.

Yet Amir and Hassan live and play together, not simply as friends, but as brothers without mothers. Their intimate story traces across the expansive canvas of history, 40 years in Afghanistan's tragic evolution, like a kite under a gathering storm. The reader is blown from the last days of Kabul's monarchy -- salad days in which the boys lives' are occupied with school, welcome snows, American cowboy movies and neighborhood bullies -- into the atrocities of the Taliban, which turned the boys' green playing fields red with blood.