I found out about Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, from my recommendations list on Amazon after I ordered Life of Pi. And I really liked LoP but I think The Kite Runner does a better job of combining the cold, harsh level of reality that informs the story with the vibrant and laughing tones we associate with childhood and the time before we, like the narrator and his best friend as a boy, lose our sense of innocence. You want to cry and reach out for the unpredictable path of a flying kite and tuck into a pungent Afghani meal when you read this, even if you understand that such pleasures will never exist again for the characters.
It’s a story about two boys, one who leads a life of privilege and opportunity and the other who works as the first one’s servant alongside his father, growing up in Afghanistan before the rise of the Taliban. Hosseini gives a wonderfully bright snapshot into the two boys’ lives and friendship, but it’s a brief one. Almost immediately after we’re introduced to the unique quirks of both children and the intricate and sometimes brutally unfair dynamics behind their friendship, the nice picture gets crumpled and twisted into a far more sinister, cruel image. The rich boy betrays his friend with his silence, and once that event occurs, all the joys of companionship and school-age life fade away. We’re left with a friendship permanently affected and a narrator who can never get through a day completely untroubled. His life’s transformation is mirrored by the changes in Afghanistan’s cultural and political standards, bearing a closer and more uncomfortable resemblance to the country we learned about post-9/11. The story’s ending is wonderful in its uncertainty. We will never be sure if the narrator really does right by his best friend just like we can never be sure we intervened the best way in Afghanistan.