I've been stalking bookstores and stocking up on my reading list - so I thought to myself why not make a review of the books I've already read? And why not make it a periodical thing? Well I can't promise that I'd be able to finish a book every week - which would translate to about 52 books a year! That's an astounding feat! Hahaha! Well I'll make it a Sunday thing, ok? So every few Sundays, do expect a new book review from me!
The latest book I've read was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. A little bit about the author - He is one of the most read and beloved novelist in the world, with more than ten million copies of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns (the next novel I'm gonna read) sold in the US, and more than thirty-eight million copies sold worldwide in more than seventy countries! (WOW!!) He is also a Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee Agency and the founter of Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
The Kite Runner is indeed a powerful novel - Khaled Hosseini's first - telling the story bond and friendship between Amir and Hassan, the former a Sunni Muslim and the later a Shi'a Muslim. Amir and Hassan grew up together, feeding from the same breast which makes them breastfeeding brothers, but Amir was born a Pashtun while Hassan a Hazara. The social caste in Afghanistan scorned such friendship, Hassan and Amir being constantly bullied by their Pashtun peers, with Hassan always stepping up to defend Amir in every single conflict.
Some of the important events in the beginning of the novel was that they young friends would always find themselves climbing to the top of the hill and sat under a pomegranate tree where Amir would read to Hassan. Sometimes Amir would tease Hassan of his illiteracy and began making up the stories and pretending to still read from the book. It was then that Hassan commented that that was the best story he had ever heard. Amir also composed himself a short story, to which Hassan was very delighted to hear but to Amir's dismay, his father or Baba would not have an ear for. It was also on the bark of that pomegranate tree that Amir carved the words "Amir and Hassan, Sultans of Kabul" signifying the strong kinship between the two.
The next chapters revealed how Amir craved for his Baba's affection, blaming himself for not being able to live up to his Baba's expectation. He was not the soccer player his Baba expected him to be. Everytime they went for a road trip, his Baba would be ashamed of him because he gets car sick and would throw up. It was in Rahim Khan, his Baba's best friend that he found a father figure, but underneath that he was always craving for his father's affection.
That moment came at last at the Kite Flying tournament held annually in Kabul, where hundreds of kite flyers fight to cut each other's strings and become the last kite still in the sky. Amir, along with Hassan holding the spool, came out victorious, and it was the first time Amir felt like his Baba's son. In the kite flying competition, when a kite's string was cut, the kite runners would seek to capture the kite to claim for his own - and the most prized kite was the last kite that was cut last. After Amir successfully cut the last kite, Hassan dutifully cried "for you, a thousand times over" as he raced along the streets to collect that last fallen kite.
After the kite flying tournament ended, however, Hassan did not come home. Amir went out looking, and found Hassan being cornered by Assef and another two of their peers, and that was when Amir witnessed the most cruel deed Assef did to Hassan. Instead of standing up to Assef the was Hassan would, Amir hid himself in a aleey like a coward. It was then that their kinship took a different turn.
The novel went on about the time when Afghanistan was in turmoil, from the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the Soviet military intervention, the exodus of refugee to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime. Amir and his Baba was not spared, enduring the journey and migration and finally ending up in San Francisco, where they made a living - his Baba working at the local gas station and amir himself went to school and studied to become a writer.
Like a bad penny, the past always has it's ways of coming back to haunt us. Amir found himself, over two decades later, caught between living the life of hidden lies and dishonor swept quietly under the rug, or putting his current, happy life into jeopardy in trying to make things right again between him and Hassan. Had the beginning be captivating, the middle and towards the end will grip you like a vice and tear your heart apart word after word, sentence after sentence. The journey that Amir endeavored to atone for his past sin to Hassan was told straigh-forward and in absolute details.
The Washington Post Book World reviewed the book as
"powerful.. no frills, no nonsense, just hard, spare prose.. an intimate account of family and friendship, betrayal and salvation that requires no atlas or translation to engage and enlighten us. Parts of The Kite Runner are raw and excruciating to read, yet the book in its entirety is lovingly written."
I couldn't agree more.
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