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The Kite Runner
from: Simon & Schuster Audio

List Price: $39.95

Off The Bookshelf's Price: $26.37

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Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 4 months Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780743530231
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
ISBN: 0743530233
Label: Simon & Schuster Audio
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Audio
Number Of Items: 8
Publication Date: June 01, 2003
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Studio: Simon & Schuster Audio
Sales Rank: 330586

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:

A Stunning Novel of Hope and Redemption

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the 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: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows us for redemption.

Amazon.com Review:
In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini 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 struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.

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. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...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.")

Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- A Modern Classic
I've read some good books in the last several years. Lately I've read a fair amount of good novels, fiction in particular. "The Double Bind" by Chris Bohjalian, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and "House of Sand and Fog" by Andre Dubus are a few examples.

I didn't know what a GREAT novel was until I read "The Kite Runner".

It has been a long time, maybe the first time in fact, that for me personally a book has been so incredibly moving that it brought me to tears. I had forgotten how deeply satisfying great writing can be to read and I can only hope that I have the opportunity to read more than one novel as great as this. "The Kite Runner" is a tour de force of modern literature, one that digs deep into the soul of its characters and exposes their greatest faults ... Read More

Rating:

- Ki
Innocence...a child's life, each day a chance to improvise
Storybooks read to the illiterate with pieces revised
Hills to climb trees to climb, dads car to go to the bizarre in
Pomegranates aroma, a true friend to find yourself in
A pledge to eat dirt or not to define who you are or not
Hazara and Suni unaware of their world as children they sing
In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things

A larger Afghan world of traditions bent on stature
One up over one down One man determined to rupture
A divergence of advantages mixed upon the disadvantaged
Bound together by a family in secret genetic heritage
Brute upon hero as in David and Goliath
Innocence faces brutality in a Kite Runners undoing
In ... Read More

Rating:

- Wonderful
I loved this book! A story of loyalty, love, guilt, shame and jealousy all with very credible characters. Shows the best and worst of people and did not have a corny ending. That is very important to me. I don't have time to read as much as I would like so to get hold of a gem like this was a real pleasure.

Rating:

- Fantastic
If there is a book that must be read, it is this, it is this, it is this...

Rating:

- powerful and moving
Wonderful book. The story is powerful and moving. The characters are vividly and realistically portrayed. You feel the pain of the hero's flaws. Hosseini's story allow you to vicariously experience life in pre- and post-war Afghanistan, as well as experience the culture shock of becoming an immigrant transplant to the US, including the subtleties of interactions among fellow transplants.

This is an immensely compelling read on so many levels, and it is one of the most enlightening books of fiction I have ever read.

Books : The Kite Runner