The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, is a fictional story about a boy’s life growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan. The main characters in the story are Amir, Baba, Ali, and Hassan.

Amir is the central character and narrator (first person) of the book. The book is more or less the story of his life. 

Baba (the Arabic word for father) is his dad. Baba is a complex, strong, conflicted, and well-respected character in the book. When he was a young man, he wrestled a bear, so needless to say, he is a large man. Also, Baba was a great businessman. He began businesses which other Afghan people said he would never do. He drinks whiskey with his closest friend Rahim even though it is forbidden in Muslim culture. Baba also does a ton of charity work. At one point he pays for the building of a new orphanage in Kabul.

Ali and Hassan are Baba’s two servants. They are Hazaras, a different social class and a persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan. They live in a mud hut behind Baba’s house. Although they are servants to Baba and Amir, there is a tremendous deal of loyalty and love among the 4 people. 

My biggest takeaway from the book was how beautiful and rich the land and culture of Afghanistan was before it was a war-stricken country. Obviously, I have never been to Afghanistan, but apparently, it was a beautiful country. In the winter it would snow, and the Afghans had rich traditions during the winter, one of which was kite fighting. The kite flyers would fight their kites in the air and do whatever was necessary to cut the line of the other kites. When a kite was destroyed, all the boys in the city would chase is as it fell from the sky. The author described the herd of boys chasing the kite as the running with the bulls in Spain. Hassan is by far the best kite runner in the city, which is why the book is entitled, “The Kite Runner”. This beautiful tradition, like most of the Afghan culture, was foreign to me.

Ultimately, the book gets a 10 out of 10 rating. It is fun, exciting, sad, heartbreaking, educational, and profound. I can’t really imagine someone who enjoys fiction not liking it. 

Favorite Quotes: 

“There is only one sin, and that sin is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft… When you kill a man, you steal a life… You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

“…Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”

“…There is a brotherhood between people who have fed from the same breast.”

“Then I saw Baba do something I had never seen him do before: He cried. It scared me a little, seeing a grown man sob. Fathers weren’t supposed to cry.”

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything – that’s how it is between people who are each other’s first memories, people have fed from the same breast.”

“For two years, I tried to get Baba to enroll in ESL classes to improve his broken English. But he scoffed at the idea. ‘Maybe I’ll spell cat and the teacher will give me a glittery star so I can run home and show it off to you,’ he’d grumble.”

“We Afghans are prone to a considerable degree of exaggeration, bachem, and I have heard many men foolishly labeled great. But your father has the distinction of belonging to the minority who truly deserves the label.”

“It wasn’t meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.”

“it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”

“She said, ‘I’m so afraid’. And I said, ‘why?’ and she said, ‘because I’m so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.'”

“A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”