The Kite Runner

£7.99

Amir, an illiterate Afghan boy growing up in 1970’s Kabul, befriends his father’s servant’s son from the despised Hazara minority. Now a 40-year-old novelist living in California Amir narrates his childhood story - explaining how he had an innate instinct for knowing where a downed kite had landed, to become the kite runner in the title, and how during Kabul’s annual kite-fighting tournament in 1975 an unspeakable event changed the relationship between the two boys forever.

Not only do we discover the ways in which their friendship was destroyed by fear, jealousy and ruthless evil, but we also examine how this destruction mirrors what’s happening to the country around them as King Zahir Shah’s 40-year reign comes to an end and the Russians turn the land into a tank-strewn battlefield, before the trigger-happy Taliban gain control.

Hosseini’s first novel, and the first Afghan novel by anyone to be written in English, is packed with emotion and draws vivid images in its simple style, creating a rich depiction of Afghan life and lending an almost folk-like quality to the tale.