The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini (2003)
“A boy who watched his best friend be destroyed and said nothing. A man who spends two decades trying to undo one moment of cowardice.”
Short Summary
In 1970s Kabul, the privileged Amir watches his Hazara servant and best friend Hassan be raped by a bully named Assef — and does nothing. He then compounds his cowardice by framing Hassan for theft, driving him and his father Ali from their home. After the Soviet invasion, Amir and his father Baba flee to California. Two decades later, Rahim Khan calls from Pakistan: Hassan is dead, Hassan was actually Baba's son, and Hassan's boy Sohrab is trapped in Taliban Kabul with Assef. Amir returns to Afghanistan to rescue the child and finally, at enormous personal cost, redeem himself.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens in San Francisco in 2001, with Amir remembering a winter day in 1975 — the day everything changed. He tells us he has been peeking into the past for twenty-six years. In the prologue's Kabul, Amir is the privileged son of Baba, a wealthy and respected Pashtun businessman. Hassan is ...