The Kite Runner | scholarship@cc

As we have discussed in class Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is his first novel and it isbelieved to be the first novel written in English by an Afghan. It takes the form of a young man’s account of coming to terms with his childhood in Afghanistan, which was scarred by personal loss and betrayal. The story is evocatively set against the tumultuous political, social and religious context of Afghanistan in the period 1970-2001.

The story begins when Amir, the narrator, is working as a writer in San Francisco and receives a phone call from Pakistan. The caller is his late father’s best friend who asks him to return to the area he and his father fled back in the early 1980s. For Amir this call is his past catching up with him. It also offers him ‘a way to be good again.’ To make that trip is to embark on a journey laden with consequence. In undertaking it Amir comes face to face with the truth about himself and the guilt that he has carried since a fateful day when he was twelve years of age.

If you are looking for extra resources on the novel remember that there are quite a few on my eng@kkc site.

Check them out!