This powerful, enthralling and a vivid image rendering fictional piece by an Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini is a great debut novel which does the twin job of awakening the reader to the harsh reality of Afghanistan about which the world knows very little and telling an equally heart-wrenching story of personal redemption of an afghan.
The title of the novel totally qualifies its purpose as it is indicative of the kite flying tournament that is crucial to the plot of the story ,the one person who affects the entire life of the narrator and also, through the metaphor of kite represents the fragility of their friendship which once affected leads to a series of events which agonizes all the characters of the story.
Through the early life of the narrator Amir, born in a wealthy Pashtun family of Afghanistan before it is ravaged by the war, the author brings out the rich cultural heritage and value which the people gave to age-old customs and traditions. But at the same time ,the discrimination towards the socially low Hazara community who are mocked, jeered and treated unequally is also very pronounced .
Amir finds a loyal friend and a true companion is his Hazara servant Hassan who is his constant playmate and stands up for him and saves him from neighborhood bullies every time, but the former is not able to save him the one time it mattered most when Hassan is brutalized by the same bullies.
Caught in his guilt of having chosen the path of least resistance and in an attempt to be the sole receiver of his Baba's admiration, Amir makes the long time servants move out of his house , but what his Baba later quotes in the book "sometimes, the events of a single day change the course of an entire life " proves to be true for him and this one event becomes the painful dictator of his inner dialogue for the rest of his life.
Set in the backdrop of the changing political scenario in Afghanistan and the subsequent curtailment of peace , the story depicts how the displaced Afghan diaspora in America try to preserve their culture and values amidst impoverishment but at least peace which was absent in their motherland, while Amir who on the outset is leading a normal life suffers from the shame of his childhood, worrying about Hassan and waiting for "a way to be good again".
He is given this chance when the events of his life bring him back to his homeland where his life's shocking secrets are revealed to him, and amidst dilemma , he sets out on a perilous journey to atone the cowardice of his youth. This journey describes the shocking details of the deplorable conditions of Afghanistan as an outcome of war where people are poverty stricken, hungry and victims of violence but at the same time, the plot twists that follow make the novel descend from realistic fiction towards unbelievable , thus breaking the believable flow of events that the author had maintained from the start.
Despite that, the novel is a fine first attempt to bring out the universal themes of love, loyalty and family relationships; guilt, dilemma and redemption in the Afghan setup vastly unknown to the reader and thus successfully draws the sympathy and interest of the reader, and is a classic portrayal of the internal struggle of an Afghan which is equally paralyzing as the war that engulfs and paralyses his own countrymen at the same time.
-KSHITIJ MITTAL
2009CE10307
I mostly agree with the reviewer’s views of this book as a book of this kind cannot disappoint many , but for me , the book , which is truly a fantastic first, is more importantly about the common relations of friendship and love and how they take shape even in the most unusual of circumstances, here referring to the relationship between Amir’s family and Hassan’s family, and the complications that arise due to that. Hassan , in contrast to Amir who is born wealthy, has nothing save his friendship , but still , it is Amir who feels guilty throughout his life of being unable to pay back to Hassan for all his kindness. Through this, the author has shown how beautiful the relationship of friendship is and that it is above the worldly traps of wealth and power and how it can make a person placed high in the social hierarchy feel low at the hands of an ordinary person .The novel also has a very realistic setting and I disagree with the reviewer for having called it unrealistic as the very same part for me is the most captivating part of the novel yet completely possible.
ReplyDeleteAlso,importantly, the one thing that Khaled Hosseini has achieved in the novel is to hold the interest of the reader throughout the novel and yet the end is just not the "happy ending " that the reader normally expects, rather it is a sober ending where Sohrab just starts to open up with Amir and his wife, thus belied the reader’s hope of witnessing the end where everything has become perfect and the tortured Sohrab has got integrated into the family and the American life, again a very realistic end.
Shahzad Gani
2009CE10338