The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner is based on a tale of friendship, jealousy, betrayal, regret and courage. 

The story starts off with with the lives of two Afghani boys Amir and Hassan who live in Kabul. Amir is a Pashtun and comes from an affluent background. He goes to school and can read and write. His friend Hassan comes from a contrasting background. He is a Hazara and has distinguished facial features. Hassan and Ali (Hassan's Dad) are servants to Amir and his father Baba. Hassan is classed as poor, yet Baba looks after Hassan and Ali well. He always includes them and Hassan is treated like a son to Baba. This makes Amir angry and sometimes he wishes that it was just him and Baba. At the start of the story Amir and Hassan are great friends and they both share the love of kite flying. As Amir and and Hassan get older, other neighbourhood children Assef, Wali and Kamal bully Hassan. They can't see why a Pashtun boy (Amir) plays with a Hazara boy (Hassan). Hassan gets given a hard time and this does have an effect on Amir.

The friendship begins to deteriorate. It's not until one day there is a kite flying competition that Amir and Hassan win. The object of the game was to cut the opponents kite from the sky. The last kite that was up in the sky and caught by the same team players were the winners. Amir was always the controller of the kite and Hassan would run extremely fast to pick up the kite at the other end. As Hassan runs to pick up the kite, he is attacked by Assef and his mates. Assef rapes him. Amir becomes worried and starts looking for Hassan as he hadn't come back immediately. He soon finds Hassan and hears him yelling, however Amir does nothing to rescue him and ignores his pleas for help. Due to this Amir thinks Hassan is a coward, as he didn't defend himself and gives in too easily. Due to this he wants Hassan out of his life. In the end Amir questions his father about getting new servants. His father was strongly against this idea and stated that he knew Ali for 40 years and that there was no way in getting rid of him. In shear spite Amir plants money and a watch under Hassan's matress. He then tells his Dad that his watch and money have been stolen. Hassan and Ali are questioned and Hassan is blamed for something he didn't do. Ali and Hassan leave their jobs with Baba and move to Bamiyan.  Baba wants to sort the problem out, but they just refuse.

After this incident Afghanistan is hit by Soviet regime. Amir and Baba escape to the USA and start a new life in San Francisco. Amir graduates from college and gets married. He becomes a writer and publishes his first book. He marries Soraya and his father becomes ill with cancer. Amir and Soraya look after Baba until he dies. One day Amir gets a phone call from his Father's friend Rahim Khan who was a respected family friend who lived in Kabul when Amir and his Dad were there. He was ill at the time of the call. He needed to see Amir face to face as there was some important news he needed to share. He also emphasised over the phone that this is the way Amir can be good again. This was twenty six years after Amir had left Kabul. When he arrives to Pakistan Rahim Khan reveals that Hassan and Amir were half brothers. Amir is shocked. Rahim Khan gives Amir a letter from Hassan and a photograph of Hassan's family -wife and child. It was also revealed that Hassan and his wife died when the Taliban invaded their home, leaving the son orphaned. It was now up to Amir to go and find his half nephew Sohrab under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This was not going to be an easy task as Amir had to fight Assef the Talib-the childhood enemy in order to get Sohrab. Amir is left in an extremely bad way. Sohrab decides to come to the rescue using his sling shot to fire a brass ball in Assef's eyes.  

Amir and Sohrab escape. Amir is hospitalised. Once he is well, Amir applies for custody of Sohrab, so that he could live with he and his wife in America. This becomes difficult , as there were no formal death certificates to prove that Sohrab was Hassan's son and that Amir is related to Hassan. 

In the end there is a happy ending, but there were a lot of complications along the way. An excellent book. At present there is the Kite Runner movie and it is based on this novel. Saw the movie before I read this book. It was great to compare the movie to the book. The movie was edited quite a bit and there was more information and detail in the book.