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. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.

The son of an Afghan diplomat whose family received political asylum in the United States in 1980, Hosseini combines the unflinching realism of a war correspondent with the satisfying emotional pull of master storytellers such as Rohinton Mistry. Like the kite that is its central image, the story line of this mesmerizing first novel occasionally dips and seems almost to dive to the ground. But Hosseini ultimately keeps everything airborne until his heartrending conclusion in an American picnic park. --Lisa Alward, Amazon.ca

'My top fiction book of the year ... marvellous'

'Beautifully nuanced, and the moment of Amir's ultimate betrayal is genuinely shocking. It is a passionate story'

'If you liked The God of Small Things, then you'll love The Kite Runner ... compelling'

'Told with simplicity and poise, it is a novel of great hidden intricacy and wisdom like a timeless Eastern tale'

?A marvellous first novel ... It's an old-fashioned kind of novel that really sweeps you away?

?Poignant ... offers a moving portrait of modern Afghanistan, from its pre-Russian-invasion glory days through the terrible reign of the Taliban?

'Hosseini's description of a childhood friendship between two boys in Kabul is a moving reflection on Afghanistan's upheavals?

?This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years ... extraordinary ... powerful?

'Hosseini's sparkling descriptions of people, places and emotions never dry up. Hosseini is a truly gifted teller of tales'

2008-08-31 Outstanding and thought-provoking!

Although this book had been on my shelf for a while I had not got around to reading it..........I have no idea why. I don't really believe hype about books because I think that everyone's opinion should be unique to them, however this story does measure up to some of the justly praises it received. It must be agreed that being set in Afghanistan would induce some to buy or avoid the book, but I don't think anyone could be so heartless that they couldn't be drawn into the story. Reading the story drew me into the lives of the 2 boys, Hassan and Amir, and by the end of the book I felt disappointed, and unusually for me, willing the story to go on. Don't see the film, read the book! an excellant short and easy read that will leave you thinking.