The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner is a first novel by Afghan American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003, it tells the story of the friendship between Amir, a well-to-do Afghan boy from Kabul, and his closest childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant. Their relationship is set against the tumultuous events from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan (and eventually the United States) and the Taliban regime. At the same time, it is the story of Amir's personal redemption as he finally succeeds in making amends with Hassan after he betrayed him years earlier.

The plot

Amir and Hassan have an idyllic childhood in Kabul before Afghanistan was rocked by civil war, even though their friendship is marred by a master-servant relationship, and the fact that Amir feels his father is sometimes too fond of Hassan, even at his expense. One of the highlights of their friendship is their competition in the kite fighting competitions that mark the start of winter in Kabul. Amir is a master kite fighter, and Hassan is an uncanny "kite runner,' able to retrieve the fallen kites and bring them home as trophies.

At twelve, Amir wins the local kite fighting competition, winning his father's esteem at last. Hassan runs off to retrieve the kite, only to encounter Assef, a local bully, with whom he has had previous run-ins. Amir tries to find Hassan, only to watch at a distance as he is raped by Assef and his gang. He is ashamed that he did nothing to intervene, and their relationship deteriorates rapidly. Now he feels he must get rid of Hassan in order to overcome the guilt. He does this on the day after his thirteenth birthday, when he takes a watch and some money he has received as gifts and hides them under Hassan's mattress in the hut he shares with his father, Ali. Although he is innocent, Hassan admits to stealing them, in order to protect his friend from embarrassment. Ali announces that he and Hassan will leave the family's service and move to the remote Hazarajat, despite the protests and even tears of Amir's usually stoic father. Though Amir never sees Hassan again, he is constantly haunted by how he betrayed him.

In 1980, Amir and his father leave Afghanistan for Peshawar in Pakistan, and eventually for the United States, to escape the new Soviet regime. Amir marries and embarks on a successful career as a novelist, but throughout all the years, he still feels that he betrayed Hassan by not coming to his aid.

Fifteen years after Amir's father died, Amir receives a telephone call from his father's business partner, Rahim Khan, who is now living in Peshawar. He calls him back to Pakistan and tells him what happened to Hassan in the intervening years. Rahim Khan moved into the family's old house, and brought Hassan, his wife, and his infant son back to tend it. Ten years later, he and his wife are murdered by the Taliban. His son, Sohrab, was taken to an orphanage. Rahim Khan asks Amir to go back to Afghanistan to rescue Sohrab, but when he refuses, he tells him a dark family secret. Ali was sterile, and Amir's father was really Hassan's father too. Hassan was Amir's half-brother, and Sohrab is his nephew.

Now Amir returns to Taliban-controlled Kabul to find Sohrab. He locates the orphanage and learns that the boy has been given to a Taliban official, who uses him as a sex slave. Amir locates the official and asks for Sohrab, only to find that the official, an executioner, is Assef, who raped Hassan twenty-five years earlier. They fight over the boy, and Amir is nearly killed, but Sohrab rescues him by shooting Assef in the eye with his slingshot. It is the culmination of a threat that Hassan had made years earlier, when Assef threatened him and Amir.

Amir and Sohrab manage to escape to Pakistan, and Amir attempts to adopt Hassan. However, he meets with sharp opposition from the local American authorities. When Amir tells Sohrab that he may have to put him in an orphanage for a while, until he can arrange the paperwork, Sohrab attempts to commit suicide. Amir finds him in time, when he runs to tell him that his wife in the United States has found a way to bring the boy back to America.

The book ends with Amir and Sohrab back in the United States, but it is only a partial victory. The pressures of the past few years have taken their toll on the boy, and he hasn't spoken a word in months. In the final scene, however, Amir thinks he noticed the briefest hint of a smile on Sohrab during a kite fighting competition by Afghan immigrants in San Francisco, after Amir uses one of Hassan's old tricks to down a rival kite.