The Kite Runner

THE KITE RUNNER is an outstanding first novel, devoid of the cliches the blurb might have presaged. The characters have life and complexity, the story is involving and relevant to the present sociopolitical climate, being centred in Afghanistan over the last forty years, and the Afghan community in America. The author, KHALED HOSSEINI, an Afghani who has lived in America since his family received political asylum in 1980, is a skilled and gifted writer.

Amir is the son of Baba, a huge Pashtun, "a force of nature", who is something of a legend, with a story that he had once wrestled a black bear. The son wants desperately to be thought well of by his towering father, who is the sort of man brave enough to risk being shot by a Russian soldier in order to defend a young woman from rape. To counter this legendary status, which could reduce the character to cartoon hero, the author has Amir’s tortured asides to temper it ("Do you always have to be the hero?"), as well as Baba’s own, gradually revealed, complicated personality.

Baba has servants, the polio-afflicted Ali and his cleft-lipped son Hassan, Hazaras who are teased mercilessly by the older children of the area, and persecuted because of their perceived lower status. But Ali and Baba are more than servant and master: they grew up together, and the bond between them is strong. Hassan’s mother ran away five days after the birth, and Amir’s mother bled to death after he was born: the two boys were nursed by the same woman, at Baba’s instigation, forging another bond that is not easily broken.

But Amir is cruel to Hassan, just as much as he values his friendship, and loves him in his own way. Hassan stands up for Amir time and again, but Amir fails his friend, and on one particular day, the day of the famous kite flying contest, he fails him in a way which haunts him for years to come.

The kite flying contests occur every year in their neighbourhood, and the crucial one which forms the moral centrepoint of this novel is in 1975, when Amir is thirteen. It is brilliantly told, every detail described to advance the story, and colour the images forming in the reader’s mind of the world in which the characters live. Amir is a deeply flawed young man, lacking the courage which his father possesses so abundantly, and yet I also felt him to be very likable and sympathetic, which attests to the skill of the author in developing his characters as rounded and vital entities.

The narrative makes integral the political events occuring throughout the time period from the 1970s through to 2001, so that we get an idea of the effects wrought by the Russian invasion, the Mujaheddin and the Taliban. Hosseini is capable of writing very moving, but unsentimental prose, particularly about

people struggling to make a life despite gross adversity. He is able to meld the global political with the local everyday survival of those caught up in horrendous upheavals and the destruction of their country, livelihoods and families.

I have obtained, through powerful storytelling, a feeling of what it is like to be an Afghan, to see one’s beautiful country destroyed, to live in fear. The author is able to depict moral complexities without clunkiness, instead catching the breath, and heart, of the reader. Because of this skill, I feel he is able to do risky things with both character and plot, so that any occasional moment where the reader’s credulity could be stretched turns out to be a moment of immensely satisfying narrative pleasure.

This is, apparently, the first Afghan novel to be written in English. It is a most distinguished beginning.

(the movie site is here: http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/ will have to wait until it releases in India)