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The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, starts out in San Fransisco, U.S.A with the main character Amir going back to his childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan over 30 years ago. He describes the close relashionship he had with his fathers sevants son, Hassan, even though Hassan and his father are the minority religion in Afghanistan. After a kite fighting contest, the notorious neighborhood bully turns Hassan against Amir and rapes him in an alley, all while Amir watches, out of site.
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The horror of what he did, or didn't do, eats Amir up inside to the point where he gets Hassan and his father to leave, and moves to America with Baba, his father, their pasts forgotten. The next couple of decades speed up, Amir gets married, Baba dies, and just when it seems like Amirs' past is long gone he gets a call from an old friend asking him to retrieve the deceased Hassans' sun from Kabul. He eventually does, with great difficulty, and brings him home to America.
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Amir is born to a prominent and wealthy man named Baba in an upscale neiborhood in the Wazir Akbar Khan region Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Hassan, the son of the servant of Baba and Amir is born. Hassan and his father, named Ali, are Hazara, the minority religion in Afghanistan.
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Amir and Hassan live happily as best friends, almost brothers, until the winter of 1975, when everything changes. Their childood was the last time that Amir was truly happy until late in his adult life.
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A popular winter tradition in Afghanistan is the kite flying contest, where hundreds of compete, and the winner is whoever posseses the last kite in the sky. When kites are cut down by other kites, they fall a great distance and it is a great honor to whover runs down and catches the final kite. Amir has a knack for kite flying, and Hassan has a knack for kite running. The day of the contest is the last time Amir and Hassan were ever good friends.
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Amir hopes that if he wins the kite flying contest and recovers the last fallen kite, he will finally win Baba's approval which he has craved for so many years. Amir wins the contest, and the first phase of his plan is accomplished. Amir asks Hassan to run the kite, and Hassan leaves him with a smile and the words " For you, a thousand times over." Amir did not know it then, but this would be the last time Hassan smiles at him for a very long time.
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Hassan successfully runs the kite and recovers it, but is gone for many hours, the reason for this is unknown to Amir. Amir gets worried and wanders the streets to look for him, and finally finds him in an alley pinned down by Assef, a notorious bully in the Wazir-Akbar region, and his two friends. Assef convinces Hassan that he is nothing more than a worthless Hazara servant to Amir, and rapes him while Amir stands unseen and does nothing. Amir would regret this moment for the rest of his life.
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From that cold day in 1975 on, Hassan and Amir live with minimal contact with almost no words. The bond that they used to share is gone, replaced by and icy silence, as if Hassan knows that Amir had the chance to help him when he was in need, but instead chose to stand by and do nothing. Hassan and Ali are asked to leave by Baba when Hassan is wrongly accused of stealing money and birthday presents from Amir.
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The Russians invade Afghanistan, Amir and Baba flee to San Fransisco, U.S.A. To Amir, this was a chance to start over and forget what happened in Kabul, but as he would soon find out, you cannot run from your past.
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Amir and Baba are living reasonably happily in San Fransico until Baba devolopes cancer and dies just days after Amir's wedding. Amir and his wife Soraya live peacefully, with Amir burying what happened in the alley on that cold day in 1975, until his past deeds catch up to him.
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Amir, now happily married and a succesful writer in America, gets a call from Baba's old buisness partner Rahim Kahn telling him that he is close to death and must come to Afghanistan to "make things right". When Amir arrives Rahim informs him to his dismay that Hassan was married and had one child named Sohrab, but Hassan and his wife were murdered by the Taliban six months ago. Rahim wants Amir to retive Sohrab from an orphanage and take him to live with him in America.
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After shaky events in recovering Sohrab from Kabul, Amir manages to bring him to America. Sohrab had been so emotionally scared by the death of his parents and the orphanage that he did not talk to anyone for his first sixth months in America, much to Amir and Soraya's dismay.
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On New Years Day 2002, Amir, Soraya and Sohrab go to a New Years festival for Afghans where a small kite flying contest takes place. Amir sees that this intrigues Sohrab and enters the competition. Amir wins, and when the final kite is cut Amir looks down at Sohrab and sees just a tiny hint of a smile. He knows that just a smile does not mean anything he did in the past is right, but he wants to make amends for Hassan and do whatever he can for his son.
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I thought that overall, The Kite Runner was one of the best books I have ever read. Its characters were complex and believable, and I thought that the author did an amazing job of making the story just the right amount of sad, because I cannot stand it when an entire book is all happy and sweet, because that is not how it is in real life. I am greatly looking forward to reading the sequel.
