Anybody read this? I imagine someone here has, being as you're all so scholarly and stuff.

What did you think of it? I thoroughly enjoyed it - the cutural insights, the honest of it all, the tragedy, and ultimately satisfying though predictable ending.

From Amazon UK:

The Kite Runner of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.

Narrated by Amir, a 40-year-old novelist living in California, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban.


I'd definitely recommend it.

Fauxie said:

I've heard good things about this book...

2the9s said:

Yes, I think there's a thread about it on one of the forums too.

NoodleSoup said:

Not from you, silly.

2the9s said:

It's a good book. And easy to read.

But seriously, I've suggested to my wife that she read it because it is quite simply written and I think she'd enjoy it. It's just a good story and very emotive.

It does sound good... ...but why does "an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land" sound like the response 2the9s would give on the "Which Superpower Would You Want" thread??...

Byron said:

Oh dude, that would be hot...

yeah. i quite liked it, though i found the writing a little too ridden with cliche sometimes. not sure if this is because of the way the book is supposed to be written, with him describing the way he saw the world through naive eyes, but i suspect that's just an easy excuse for sloppy writing.

i also had to leave it for a while, because i felt very uncomfortable reading about his father's illness when my mother had just passed away.

other than that, though, i enjoyed it & would recommend it.

TheFrog said:

Oh, wow. Co-sign. On all accounts.

HamsterHuey said:

TheFrog said:

How IS you, you lurker you?

HamsterHuey said:

keeping well and happy, thank you h.

and i hope you are doing likewise?

Trying to.

Fauxie said:

Sounds interesting

I've been looking for a book to read since I finished the last one and this might be it!

TheFrog said:

Lleena said:

why thank you, m'lady.

TheFrog said:

Yes, cliche could be it, which is quite funny considering Amir's highlighting of this very tool in his narative and noting how his professor scoffed at it, but there was something rather simplistic, rather heavy-handed about the book, but didn't you find yourself enjoying it just the same? It was a good tale, albeit a rather contrived one at times I thought, but who am I to say? The details about life in Afghanistan through the period covered were fascinating for me, and I don't doubt that such events happened.

Fauxie said:

i did enjoy it very much, overall. i shall probably pick it up and read again at some point in the future, too. though i'm onto more William Dalrymple right now, so it'll have to wait.