The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

I read it in one day. I loved it.

It's a well written book but a flawed one in my opinion. My main gripe is that it brushes over the Afgan attitude to women completely. There are no substantial female characters, and he conveniently meets his Afgan wife in American surroundings. I also think the villian is a bit of a cartoon.

Personally I felt I learned more about the country from the Bookseller of Kabul.

it's a bit melodramatic - though well written and very readable.

my problem with it is that it is not really an 'Afghan' novel. it is a western novel written by an american of afghani extraction. the themes of the novel - of redemption and reconciliation - are thoroughly western themes.

Honestly, after all the good things i ehard about it, i was a little dissapointed, especially with the ending. still a very good book though.

it was good till the last third, which was trite, hackneyed. come on, the "bad guy" was a corrupt tyranical druggie, a rapist, a child molester, a blond, blue-eyed Nazi?! Why not have "EVIL" tatooed in his forehead. Cartoonish characterization.

And the ending in a SF park with the kites. That's too coincidental. It was a "Hollywood" ending.

Its a book about young boys being buggered - fact

Its been well received in the west simply because it seems to give people here an easy understanding of how things are out there, but is also tied to the US. For any movie or novel set outside its at some point got to be tied in to the west to make it a bestseller.

Frankly its a very average book, and an easy read.

i understand your concerns and felt the same way... however his new book "A Thousand Splendid Suns" deals primarily with women: The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten"—is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters.i have yet to read it but have heard that it is even better than "Kite Runner" which i highly enjoyed!

book reader wrote:

It's a well written book but a flawed one in my opinion. My main gripe is that it brushes over the Afgan attitude to women completely. There are no substantial female characters, and he conveniently meets his Afgan wife in American surroundings. I also think the villian is a bit of a cartoon.

Personally I felt I learned more about the country from the Bookseller of Kabul.

I agree - the book was going well, then it went way, way over the top - and that's too bad, it could have been fantastic but got extremely unbelievable.

i thought it was over hyped. the plot was simple and i figured out who was who long before it as "revealed."

it was decent at revealing some info about afghan culture though.

not a bad book but not worthy of all the praise it has received in my humble opinion.

does he mention the afghan tradition of using little boys for sex and women for "baby making"?

look it up. Or, talk to your local afghanistan vet.

Thanks to those who answered, and I agree with a lot of the criticisms mentioned too. And I'm looking forward to reading A Thousand Splendid Suns and the Bookseller of Kabul.

The idea that a book has to be tied in to the West in some way in order for it to be accepted is clearly true, in my opinion. But even if there is that limited perspective, at the very least it is a start towards greater understanding. I really think fiction can help people see others as similar to themselves, and writers have a gift that can show that - that was the point I wanted to raise and ask opinions about. This might not be the best book, but I mentioned it because of the war that has taken far too high a toll, and there are too many who still see it only as a matter of "us and them", while overlooking the Afghan people through all of this madness. Same could be said about Iraq.

And to the message I replied to; which culture do you know which does not have a history of these things you mentioned (yes, BOTH of them, and worse)? Only goes to show that human beings are more the same than we want to admit. Under similar circumstances, do you really think that any other country or society would be any different than what Iraq of Afghanistan or other places have become? So we should be grateful we are not there, but how far away are we, really? I we understand this, we should all be doing something about what is happening.