The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

As expected, The Kite Runner is emotionally hard going. Compounding the novel's tension, the US withdrawal of Afghanistan was taking place as I read this rather harrowing exploration of fathers and sons, betrayal and redemption framed by Afghanistan’s tumultuous past.

Hosseini manages a masterful job of redeeming the character of the central narrator here, but he does make the reader pay for this hard-won understanding. In offering an insight into the mysteries of Afghani life, culture and recent history, the book is rarely dull.

I often find the endings of such books disappointing, but this is not the case here. While some of the unlikely coincidences that occur during the third act’s redemptive arc, there’s a real heart to the damaged optimism in what leads to a lovely final moment of the book, perhaps my favourite part of the whole thing. Not even the inevitable failures of the cynical US policy to Afghanistan could dent that.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2