Book about Afghanistan written for western audience
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel, was published in paperback in April 2004 and is already a bestseller around the Bay Area and the nation. The author will make a special appearance at 2 p.m. Saturday at Morgan Hill’s BookSmart.
The Kite Runner is the first novel written about Afghanistan for a western readership and it was written by a Bay Area resident. Though fiction, Hosseini’s masterpiece creates a bridge for readers to explore the paternal heart of Afghan culture – before the Russian invasion – through a story that is intimately told by a first person narrator, Amir, a flawed hero who, as a boy, betrays his friend and servant boy, Hassan.
As an adult, Amir must find a way to atone for that betrayal, during the fearsome days of the Taliban.
The title refers to kite fighting tournaments, in which kite strings are run through ground glass and glue to cut down other kites. A kite runner chases after and tries to capture the last kite cut free to win the contest.
Hosseini is a physician with Kaiser Hospital in Mountain View and wrote while working full time.
Hosseini’s own history is as compelling as his book. He was born in 1965 in Kabul, the son of a diplomat. In 1980, after the Soviet invasion, the family was granted political asylum in the United States.
He says that for him there’s no way to separate what happened to Hassan, the boy who’s brutalized in the book, from what has happened to Afghanistan in the last 22 years.
“It’s a history of Afghanistan, even though it’s an intimate story about two boys,” Hosseini said. “Fiction is a great way to learn history. Think of “The Grapes of Wrath,” that was such a vivid view of the Depression.”
Hosseini was 15 when he came to San Jose. He says immigrating was hard for his parents because they already had established lives and identities.
BookSmart, 17415 Monterey Road. Details: 778-6467.
