Kite Runner - by Khaled Hosseini

Perhaps it was because I listened to it instead of actually reading it, and the audio version had been abridged, but I was somewhat disappointed in this book. Having just recently read the author's first book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, I'd found it to be a wonderful book. I had looked forward to The Kite Runner being just as good.

The Kite Runner is another story of Afghanistan, this time of a boy who grows up in the wealth of Afghanistan. His father is a businessman with a large house and servants. The servants, a man and his son, are also close friends of Amir and his father. The servant had grown up with Ali's father, raised as a brother, just as Amir grew up with Hassan, the servants son. Amir always felt that his father didn't love him because Amir did not play sports or do the things his father wanted him to do, choosing instead to read books and write. Both Amir and Hassan lost their mothers shortly after birth, and grew up as best friends, until tragedy struck one day when they were 11.

Trying to win his father's love, Amir entered the annual Kite Fighting contest with Hassan's help. They were set to win with Hassan chasing down the final kite. When Amir went to find him, he saw something that changed both of their lives forever. His own guilt caused him to push his best friend away, to the point of lying about it and having them thrown out of his father's house.

Over the next 27 years, Amir and his father are forced to take exile to America, and as their lives changed in ways they never imagined, Amir never saw Hassan again. Twenty-seven years later, Amir found himself back in Afghanistan, forced to face his past and the guilt he'd been running from and finally given a chance to atone for what he had done.

Overall, the story is great, well-written and gripping. Yet, it falls apart in the end and left me feeling disappointed.