THE KITE RUNNER (audiobook) by Khaled Hosseni

 






Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2003.
Read by the author, Khaled Hosseni.
Duration: 12 hours, 1 minute.
Unabridged.

This book was published about 20 years ago and I just got around to reading it. This is not an uncommon thing for me - I did the same with the Harry Potter books and The Handmaid's Tale, also.  I was motivated to read this for the same reason I was motivated to read The Handmaid's Tale - it was permanently placed on a banned book list in Idaho in May of 2022.

There are three parts to the story. The first part is a long description of the life of Amir, a boy who is growing up in Afghanistan in the 1970s. Amir had his problems, but he had a pretty decent life. He and his father fled to the United States when the chaos think of as "Afghanistan" began - the Communist Revolution of 1978.

The author, Khaled Hosseni
The second part of the book is the story of how Amir and his father adapt to life in the United States, including the re-building of an Afghan community in California. 

The third part of the book is Amir dealing with a great offense that he committed against his best friend when he was a young man as he heads back to Afghanistan.

***********

For years and years, I have been hearing how amazing this book is. It is very hard to live up to almost 20 years of hype. This is a good book (I rate it 4 out of 5 stars), but not an amazing book. It was a first book for Hosseni and it shows first book problems like pacing issues. The first part is very slow and Amir's mental self-flagellation happens so often that it gets old. I wanted to scream at Amir to do something about it or just shut up about it.

Bottom line - it is a good book, but not an amazing one. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE KITE RUNNER by Khaled Hosseni.

Here is a link to an article about books banned in Florida schools during the 2023-2024 school year. It is a ridiculously long list. Here are other schools that have banned this book: Click here. 


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