Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Kite Runner- Book Review


A captivating brilliant novel from Khaled Hosseni. The advantage of its being in first person made full justice to the emotional extract. The story is about two friends, Amir and Hasan (though Amir couldn’t accept till the end that he was a friend to Hasan) in Afghanistan. Amir and his baba leave Afghan due to Russian invasion in Afghan and flee to America. After several years (after Amir’s baba’s death due to cancer and after Amir’s marriage with Soraya)Amir goes to Afghan and bring late Hasan’s son to America as an act of repentance for a cowardy betrayal he had done to his friend in his childhood days.

Usually, many novels bring out innocence when the subject is about an infant and end up forcing the author’s thoughts through the child. There are definitely some rare pieces where the child is brought out in its original form, a very difficult task, say Lucy the pisher in “The Burning Summer” by Claire Raine. Even in those rare pieces child is depicted as an embodiment of innocence. It is true that under the milky skin, hiding beneath the innocence a child can be cruel to the core; however since innocence is the basic character, the cruelty sometimes lead to compunction like Amir in Kite Runner.

Amir’s baba rocks throughout the novel. Though the author thought of surprising us by telling Hasan as illegitimate son of his baba, he had left enough hints right from the beginning and I was not really surprised.

I saw a lot of me in Amir, his tastes, his thought process, may be because he had flaws and so am I and I believe so are everyone. Reading through this I felt little uneasy as my wrong deeds of the past pricked me. But I adore Rahim khan’s statement to Amir that only purity in character can give you guilt feeling. As you said, there’s always a way to be good again. Thank you Rahim for that. .

1 comment:

Unknown said...

ippo than padikkaraya intha book? It came out almost 3 years ago. Read his second book - a thousand splendid suns. nice read.