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Description edit
In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, the author accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, who is also Amir's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
Characters edit
- Amir: The main protagonist and narrator of the novel.The book is a tremendous achievement about the travails of Afghans who fled Afghanistan and relocated in the US - interwoven in the book is a poignant satire on the State of Afghanistan, a moving tale of Romance in the USA, a tribute to a saga of friendship, the tremendous power of love for a friend, and acknowledgment of human failings during the growing years of the chief protagonist in Afghanistan and repayment of his moral debt decades later to his friend ....The book is a classic tale of fidelity and being a "Mirror of its Times" - in my view - is Literature in the true sense of the word! Hassan's half brother SK
- Hassan: Close friend of Amir although Amir looks at him as more of a servant because he is the son of Ali and a Hazara. However, he shares almost everything with him. He grew up with Amir and when he was born, it was Amir' s name that first came out of his mouth. Hassan never found out the reality of his parents till his very end and dies along with his wife leaving behind his son. Hassan could be described as the epitome of love, forgiveness, friendship and loyalty. A close freind of amir SK
- Amir: Self-centered at times but has good intentions, Amir seems lost all throughout his life until he finds a way to "be good again."
- Baba: Amir's father, very important in the beginning of the book. Baba exhibits several transformations in the novel. Baba feels anger towards Amir at times, but also feels very proud of his son at others.
- Ali: Initially thought to be the father of Hassan. After Baba and Hassan leave Afghanistan he is killed by a land mine. Also, the servant of Amir father 'Baba' and childhood friend. Baba and Ali grew up together with Ali working as a servant SK
- Rahim Khan: Baba's business partner and best friend in Afghanistan. SK
- Soraya: Amir's wife. She never got any alliances as she had run away with another guy before. She and Amir fall in love, marry and try to have a baby but always fail.
- Sohrab: Add a description of this character.
- Amir: He is the main character and he isn't very confident in himself. His dad is Baba and his best friend is Hassan
- Farid: Driver in Pakistan who helps Amir SK
- Wahid: Friend of Assef.
- Kamal: Another friend of Assef SK
- Farzana: Hassan's wife
- Dr. Kumar: The doctor who treats Hassan SK
- Assef: The local bully who plays a pivotal role in Amir's relationship with Hassan and later in his relationship with Sohrab. A local bully who rapes Hassen SK
Quotes edit
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“There is a way to be good again.”
Rahim Khan -
“For you, a thousand times over.”
Hassan -
“The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.”
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“In 1980, when we were still in Kabul, the U.S. announced it would be boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow. “Wah wah!” Baba exclaimed with disgust. “Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won’t come swim in your pool.””
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“Every woman needed a husband. Even if he did silence the song in her.”
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“If America taught me anything, it’s that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts’ lemonade jar.”
Omar -
“Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the VOLUME knob on life.Silence is pushing the OFF button. Shutting it down. All of it.”
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“We saw our first Western together, Rio Bravo with John Wayne, at the Cinema Park, across the street from my favorite bookstore. I remember begging Baba to take us to Iran so we could meet John Wayne. Baba burst out in gales of his deep throated laughter-a sound not unlike a truck engine revving up-and, when he could talk again, explained to us the concept of voice dubbing. Hassan and I were stunned. Dazed. John Wayne didn't really speak Farsi and he wasn't Iranian! He was American, just like the friendly, longhaired men and women hanging around in Kabul, dressed in their tattered, brightly colored shirts. We saw Rio Bravo three times, but we saw our favorite Western, The Magnificent Seven, thirteen times. With each viewing, we cried at the end when the Mexican kids buried Charles Bronson-who, as it turned out, wasn't Iranian either.”
Amir -
“Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?...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 the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?...There is no act more wretched than stealing,...A man who takes what's not his to take, be it life or a loaf of naan...”
Baba -
“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”
Rahim Khan -
“A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”
Rahim Khan -
“There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.”
Baba -
“It wasn't meant to be, or, maybe, it was meant not to be.”
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“The building that hadn't entirely collapsed barely stood.”
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“They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.”
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“How much more do you need to see ? Let me save you the trouble: Nothing that you remember has survived. Best to forget.”
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“"For you a thousand times over"”
Hassan, and Amir -
“"It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime..."”
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“"And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too."”
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“"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."”
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“"it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place."”
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“"A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything"”
Baba -
“"It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.”
Amir -
“"Men are easy,' he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. 'A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand...well, God put a lot of thought into making you."”
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“"That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms."”
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“"Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself."”
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“"...there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this <hospital> corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is."”
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“"One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples."”
Hassan -
“"War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace."”
Baba -
“"There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood."”
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“"People say that eyes are windows to the soul."”
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“"I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away."”
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“"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."”
Amir -
“"zendigi migzara!..." (life goes on)”
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“A boy who doesn’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”
Amir -
“As an Afghan, I knew it was better to be miserable than rude.”
Amir
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“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
Highlighted by 478 Kindle customers -
“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”
Highlighted by 440 Kindle customers -
And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
Highlighted by 416 Kindle customers -
“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “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 the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”
Highlighted by 395 Kindle customers -
And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.
Highlighted by 394 Kindle customers -
“Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?”
Highlighted by 385 Kindle customers -
I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
Highlighted by 376 Kindle customers -
Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.
Highlighted by 292 Kindle customers -
Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence. Kites were the one paper-thin slice of intersection between those spheres.
Highlighted by 279 Kindle customers -
Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.
Highlighted by 271 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
- Afghanistan: Kabul, Bamiyan, Jalalabad
- San Francisco, California
- Pakistan: Peshawar, Islamabad
First Sentence edit
'I became what I am today at the age of 12, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.'
Glossary edit
- Hazara: A term describing the Hazara people, an ethnic minority originating in the mountainous region of Afghanistan called Hazarajat. Characterized by their mongoloid facial features, adherence to Shi'a Islam, and long history of persecution.
- Mujahedin: A term used to describe a group of Muslims engaged in a war or conflict. In this novel, it describes the Afghanistan Mujahedin Freedom Fighters Front, which challenged the Soviet forces and later lost against the PDPA (People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan) government.
- Shi'a Islam: The second largest denomination of the Islamic faith. Shi'a Islam believes that the teachings of Muhammad were carried through his descendants and do not accept the caliphate.
- Shorawi: The Farsi term for the Soviets, who invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and occupied the country for a decade.
- Sunni Islam: The largest denomination of Islam. Sunni Islam accepts the caliphate, meaning that it considers the Caliph or head of a Muslim state a successor to Muhammad.
Themes & Symbolism edit
- Religion: Much of the book is deeply rooted in the religious customs of Amir's country, and how this religion is used by horrible people as a shield to do ghastly wrong with no remorse.
- Love: The Kite Runner tells the story of how love, truly unconditional love, exists, and can overcome the worst situations.
Series & Lists edit
This is book 13 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
Preceded by Breaking Dawn, and followed by To Kill a Mockingbird.
This is book 21 of 94 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2011). (authoritative list)
Preceded by Power of One, and followed by The Pillars of the Earth.
This book is in Random Synapses: 100 Book Challenge (2011). (community list)
This is book 13 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2011). (authoritative list)
Preceded by Breaking Dawn, and followed by To Kill a Mockingbird.
This book is in 100 Fantabulous Book Challenge. (community list)
This book is in Book Lover's Cook Book, The. (authoritative list)
This is book 50 of 98 in ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009. (authoritative list)
Preceded by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and followed by Daughters of Eve.
This book is in KCPL Discussion Kit (Aug2010). (community list)
This is book 12 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2010). (authoritative list)
Preceded by Eclipse, and followed by Breaking Dawn.
This is book 18 of 100 in Top 100 Books That Defined The Noughties (Telegraph). (authoritative list)
Preceded by Madoff: The Man Who Stole $65 Billion, and followed by Snow.
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 13 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
Preceded by Breaking Dawn, and followed by To Kill a Mockingbird.
This is book 37 of 95 in Telegraph Top 100 Books, 2008. (authoritative list)
Preceded by Persuasion, and followed by Corelli's Mandolin.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Khaled Hosseini (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Country: United States
Publication Date: May 29, 2003
ISBN: 1573222453
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Country: United States
Publication Date: May 29, 2003
ISBN: 1573222453
Page Count: 324
Awards edit
- Alex Awards (2004)
- Exclusive Books Boeke Prize (2004)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: PS3608.O832 K58
- Dewey: 813.6
Subjects edit
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Movie Connections edit
- The Kite Runner (IMDb): Released in 2007.
More Books Like This edit
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