The Kite Runner

By: Khaled Hosseini

Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini

Length: 12 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara - a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and about the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons - their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But through the devastation, Khaled Hosseini offers hope for redemption.

©2003 Khaled Hosseini (P)2003 Simon & Schuster Inc. All Rights Reserved. AUDIOWORKS. is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division. Simon & Schuster Inc.

Critic reviews

• Alex Award Winner, 2004

"A beautiful novel...ranks among the best-written and most provocative stories of the year." (The Denver Post)
"Powerful first novel...tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love." (The New York Times)

Unbelievably touching

I've listened to over 60 books in the past year and this is my favorite so far, by far!

Great Book

The book started out a little slow, but I was fully engaged once it got going. I learned a lot about Afghanistan and the culture too. Great book.

Listen - don't read!

A friend recommended I read The Kite Runner - but finding it on Audible I chose to download and listen. I thoroughly recommend this option. The author's voice (and accent), reading his own story, gives it added drama and charisma. One of the very best books I have "read" through the magic of audible - it gave me hours of walking pleasure - in fact I extended my daily walk from 3 to 5 kilometers, so I could hear more!

High Praise

In this remarkable book, Hosseini has created faces we can recognize in the hundreds of images of the war in Afghanistan that we've all seen in our newspapers and on our televisions. His portrayal of characters whose lives have been thrown into total upheaval, who have had to face the challenges of adulthood while still children, who are thrown into situations for which they have no training or skill and who still manage to survive is incredibly well-done. The people he creates are truly alive; you cry and bleed with them. And you hope with them too.

I agree with some critics that there are some rough edges arising from this being a first novel, and there may be some convenient coincidences to bring the book to its conclusion. But the book is at heart a comparison of life as the fantasies that we create and life as the harsh realities we cannot avoid and must learn to deal with. The author's strong use of first person present tense is a powerful tool he uses in creating the tension of this underlying theme of reality vs. unreality. All this is painted with a broad brush of the Afghan culture -- it's folk tales, poetry, religion, native symbolism, all peppered with a bit of Afghan "recklessness" and whimsy -- that leaves one very curious to learn more about these people. It is a notable book from that perspective alone.

The author as reader was good; he brought authenticity and made it a personal experience. It is hard to keep clear in one's mind that this is fiction.

I highly recommend this book as an adventure into a cultural experience that most of us will never know, and to meet people who are well worth knowing, if only to discover those bits of humanity that are common to us all no matter how diverse our lives may be.

Fantastic!

I feel a much more informed American after reading this book. Even though "The Kite Runner" is a novel, I believe in my heart that some of the events of Amir's childhood are actually based on the author's own. How fortunate for the reader to have a better understanding of life in Afghanistan prior to their war with Russia.

Absolutly Fantastic!

I?ve listened to a lot of books from audible. Never have I so thoroughly enjoyed a book as I did this one! I have never rated a book either. For this one, I was simply compelled. Do yourself a favor? listen to this riveting story.

Very good, but still flawed

Any additional comments?

This book was quite different to the usual type of books I read so I don't have much to compare it to. It's quite emotionally heavy and it's set in a culture I knew very little about. There's a fair amount of native language words used throughout the book, which I surprisingly didn't mind at all and mostly even enjoyed. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author and I thought he did a really good job.

I really liked the writing, which is weird since it was relatively simple. I think I enjoyed it because it felt authentic and suited the book's narrator. The only significant gripe I had with the writing was with the overuse of foreshadowing phrases which at first I didn't mind, but after a while, they got in the way of my enjoyment of the story. The one noteworthy aspect of the writing that I really enjoyed was how accurately biased the story was told from the book's narrator. You experienced his world through his eyes and thoughts, knowing that often he perceived things quite differently from the way they probably were.

I loved how real the characters felt and although I couldn't personally relate to any of them, I still understood all the emotions they went through. Everyone was humanly flawed and the exceptions made sense due to the narrator's bias and guilt he felt towards those particular characters. The setting was nicely detailed and also felt realistically portrayed, with certain areas getting more detail than others, which felt like how one remembers old memories.

While I never felt that the author was being condescending, he did come across as emotionally manipulative a few times, especially with the foreshadowing elements he used to try to build up suspense. I also definitely enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second half, since the second half felt like it was trying to live up to and surpass the emotional depths of the first half. As far as gripes go, though, they are admittedly quite nit-picky.

There were a lot of elements that were very well done, from all the little details of the protagonist's childhood that highlighted his naivety and simple needs, to all the symbolism scattered throughout the book. I'm very glad I picked this book up and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to read a good, character-driven story that's not your standard optimistic fare. This book has some flaws, but they're far outweighed by the engrossing characters and heartfelt story which will most likely leave an impression on you long after you've read it.

An unforgettable book

The story is mostly sad. I was so angry with the narrator for his childish cowardice, yet from the time he betrayed his friend, he was overcome by guilt and grief for what he had done to his friend. His father and some of the minor characters are so beautifully written and so human in their failings.

The book has a mildly happy ending, but it needed to finish on an optimistic note after so much sadness in the prelude to the end.

Khosseini is a remarkably gifted writer. Let us hope for many more such books from him.

Beautiful storytelling

A friend told me about this novel. I don't usually read novels preferring travel memoirs. I'm so glad I decided to listen because it was a great experience. The author reads the story so convincingly that you forget it is a novel and begin thinking it is his own story. The book spans almost a lifetime and there are many surprises as the events unfold and eventually leave us with a very touching tale of friendship with troubles -- big ones a long the way. As I listened over the course of several weeks I found myself telling most everyone I met that I was reading a really great novel "Kite Runner." I would be surprised if someone did not find it a compelling listen.

Caught by surprise

I absolutely loved this story, such a touching story on so many levels. The narration was beautiful.