novelist 
What kind of adventure do they have?
The story of "The Kite Runner" opens in the Kabul of the 1970s. The main character, and the narrator, is Amir, the teenage son of Baba, a prosperous businessman. The film's title derives from the fact that Amir likes kite fighting, a popular sport in Afghanistan, and the central incident in the novel occurs during a kite fighting tournament. Amir has cut an opponent's line and his friend Hassan, his "kite runner", is racing to fetch the downed kite when he is set upon and sexually assaulted by a gang of bullies, who despise him because he is a member of the minority Shia Muslim Hazara ethnic group. (Amir, like the bullies, is from the majority Sunnite Pashtun group). Unknown to Hassan Amir, who was running closely behind him, witnesses the assault, but fails either to intervene or to summon help.This incident puts an end to the friendship between the boys. Amir, ashamed of his behaviour, wants to get rid of Hassan from his life, and falsely accuses him of theft. (Hassan is the son of Baba's servant Ali). Hassan, not wanting to expose his friend, falsely confesses; Baba is ready to forgive him, but Ali leaves the family's service, taking Hassan with him. When the Soviets invade Afghanistan in 1978, Amir and Baba are forced to leave the country and make a new life for themselves in California, where Amir becomes a writer. Many years later, after Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban, Amir has an opportunity to atone for his treatment of Hassan, but this involves him making a dangerous journey back to his homeland.Khaled Hosseini offers us a window onto a culture which, for most of us in the West, is an exotic one, as well as a commentary on the turbulent recent history of Afghanistan. He clearly has little time for either the secular totalitarianism of the Communists or the religious totalitarianism of the Taliban; there are graphic scenes depicting the brutality of both regimes. Kites were banned by the Taliban, and the book's central image of the soaring kite may be symbolic of hopes for a return of the happier times which Afghanistan enjoyed before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1973.Yet, perhaps more importantly, Hosseini also deals with some universal human themes, most notably friendship and father-son relationships. Hassan is Amir's devoted companion, but Amir finds it difficult to regard him as his "friend", even though Hassan has no reluctance in using this word about Amir. The two boys are divided by ethnicity, by religion and, most importantly, by social class, which makes it difficult for Amir to accept Hassan as an equal. Amir tries to persuade himself that he failed to come to Hassan's assistance because he was too afraid to do so, but his motives were more complex than simple cowardice; part of the reason is that he despises Hassan as an inferior and regards his devotion as no more than a servant's duty towards his master.The other important relationship in the book is that between Amir and Baba. (Amir's wife Soraya is a relatively minor character; this is a book where relationships between men are given greater weight than those between men and women). Amir, whose mother died giving birth to him, is haunted by the idea that he is a disappointment to his father, an idea which has some basis in truth. The two men are very different. Baba has little time for books and culture; his main interests, apart from his business, are hunting and sport, which do not interest the studious, bookish Amir. He looks down on his son's ambition to become a writer, which he regards as an unmanly way to earn a living. (He would have been happier had Amir used his academic gifts to study law or medicine). Amir's love of kite-fighting is in part due to the fact that it is the one physical sport at which he can excel and therefore a way for him to win favour in Baba's eyes. Much of Amir's life, in fact- even after Baba's death- can be interpreted as an attempt to gain his father's approval. It is only later in life that Amir learns something which causes him to reappraise his relationships with both Baba and Hassan.Although Amir and Baba are complex figures, some of the other characters are drawn in over-simplified terms. Hassan is perhaps too good to be true, and Assef, the leader of the bullies who assaulted Hassan who later appears as senior Taliban official, is certainly too bad to be true. Not content with making his main villain a bully, a bigot and a sadist, Hosseini also makes him a paedophile and a Nazi. The plot, particularly in the second half of the book, is excessively reliant upon coincidence (although Hosseini is far from being the only writer to be guilty of this) and the scenes set in California lack the power and local colour of those set in Afghanistan.The book's faults, however, are outweighed by its virtues. Hosseini gives a wonderfully vivid picture of life in pre-Soviet Afghanistan and draws a powerful psychological portrait of his central character, a man dominated by the shadow of his father and by the need to make amends for his act of betrayal. In this respect it reminded me of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", another novel from the early part of the last decade which deals with the theme of a person who, as an adult, attempts to atone for a youthful misdeed which has had serious consequences. Of the two books, I would perhaps rate "Atonement" slightly higher, but then that is a work by a very experienced novelist. "The Kite Runner", by comparison, is a first novel, but it is a very good oen and was amde into an equally good film by Marc Forster. 