The Kiterunner has been really good so far. Even though it’s really, really sad, I think it’s a really great book. It’s sort of depressing because most of the people in the book, aside from the main character Amir, have died. With some of them, Amir has made peace and repaired their relationship (for example, before his father dies of cancer, Amir gets married and goes to college, which finally made his father proud of him). But then his relationships with some of the other characters are not fixed before those characters die. When his childhood friend Hassan is killed by the Taliban, Amir had still never apologized for all that he had done to his friend when they were younger. There is one way to repay Hassan, however, and that is to retrieve his son from the now dangerous Kabul and rescue him to safety. It seems that Amir’s relationship with him was very important, because he became determined to save Hassan’s son from danger.
The whole time I’ve been reading I thought the book was a true story, though, and that the author was writing about past experiences and their own life. It turns out that it’s really just fiction, but I think a lot of the stories about Afghanistan as a country are based on fact. For instance, the way that the author shows the Taliban as horrible, irrational people that only make more problems in Afghanistan is probably very true. I really like the author’s writing style. He uses a lot of detail and keeps the book really interesting with a lot of stories. I’m excited to keep reading…
