The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

It was Khaled Hosseini’s second book that I read. The first one was his latest book, “And the Mountains Echoed”. Both were stories written about family life in Afghanistan. It was an eye-opener for me about how life in Afghanistan looked like as usually I only heard about the country’s name from the newspaper and television, mostly about war.

I asked few friends’ opinion who read the above book before and they simply said it was good. They didn’t elaborate further and I didn’t ask more too, as I wanted to find out the story myself. I bought this book many months ago and kept it inside the shelf. Only few days ago I told myself that I had to read it this time, no more delay.

As usual, I brought the book with me and read in on my way to work or return back home inside the MRT or bus, during my lunch break, before sleeping and so on. The recent haze had become worse. If there was nothing, I just wanted to return home fast, took a bath, had my dinner, and stayed inside my room. Even stayed in living room was suffering for me as haze still lingered around as I couldn’t stop where the wind blows.

Yesterday night, it was 8pm. I told myself, it’s early and I’d spend myself reading tonight. Let’s see how much I could read. But I’d devote my time just to read this book.

I hid inside the air-con room, covered myself with blanket and turned on the side table lamp beside me. I continued reading. It was from page 101, chapter 9. The first few chapters had already excited me. It was confession, nothing but the truth feeling. As story went on, it brought me with much more excitement. The language that the author used, the feeling that he expressed in the characters, it engrossed me. I kept on reading. I felt that my eyes were glued to the book, didn’t want to stop, just wanted to keep reading, to continue the excitement, to see what would happen next. It blew me up. The story was simply beautiful.

I finally finished reading it at almost 1am. I didn’t care that I would get tired the next morning at work. I didn’t care when my neck was actually paining due to lower down my neck too much while reading it. I even brought the book inside the toilet while having a toilet break as I didn’t want to waste time not to continue the story. And it was all worth it :)

“Because its themes of friendship, betrayal, guilt, redemption and the uneasy love between fathers and sons are universal themes, and not specifically Afghan, the book has been able to reach across cultural, racial, religious and gender gaps to resonate with readers of varying backgrounds.” — Khaled Hosseini, 2005