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Inhaltsangabe
Literaturwissenschaft

Borg Ried i. I.

2012, Schneiderbauer

Kilian H. ©
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ID# 13954







The Kite Runner – Book Report


The novel “The Kite Runner” by Afghan-born American novelist and physician Khaled Hosseini was published in 2003 and expeditiously became an international bestseller selling over 21 million copies worldwide. The book tells the story of the relationship between a little Afghan boy Amir who is coming from a good family and his friend who together with his father serves Amir’s family.

The story illustrates a lot of the boys’ problems and how their lives get messed up when the Russians invade their country.

Settings

At the beginning the story takes place in Afghanistan during the Sixties, but after some time when the Soviet Union is invading Afghanistan the story continues in the US and then returns to Afghanistan again after about two decades.

Plot summary

Amir, a little boy whose mother died giving birth to him lives in a big mansion together with his father Baba who is a highly respected, rich man. They have two servants employ two servants – Hassan, Amir’s best friend and Ali, his father.

But Amir’s jealous all the time because it appears to him that Baba likes Hassan more than his own son because Hassan has all the characteristics Baba would want Amir to have. So one day Amir pretends that Hassan has stolen his watch and because of that he and his father have to leave.

When Amir’s at the age of 18 the Russians invade Afghanistan and he and Baba are forced to flee to the United States leaving all of their property.

In America they don’t have much money anymore and to make matters worse Baba is diagnosed lung cancer. But Amir is planning to marry Soraya, girl from the Afghan community in America and Baba manages to attend the marriage shortly before he dies.

Amir is very happy to live with Soraya and his efforts as a writer gain success, but they recognise that they are not capable of getting children.

The years pass by and suddenly Hassan receives a call by his father’s former friend Rahim Khan, who seems to be very ill. From Khan, Amir learns the fates of Ali and Hassan. Ali was killed by a land-mine. And Hassan and his wife called Farzana are shot dead by the Taliban.

Now their son Sohrab is an orphan living together with many other children in an orphanage. Amir also learns that Hassan actually was his brother, which gives him reason to go back to Afganistan and save Sohrab. So he goes back there on a highly dangerous mission and he has to fight against about a bad guy called Assef whom he knows from his youth and has to solve problems with Sohrab’s naturalisation because he can finally take him back to America and to his wife Soraya.

But Sohrab has kind of a trauma, doesn’t speak much and is not happy in America. The story ends at this point and so you don’t come to know whether everythi.....

That results in a very complicated situation where Baba tries to abide the facade but at the same time still loves his son Hassan but actually wants to show it to him.

Ali: As mentioned he’s not Hassan father but pretends to be. You don’t get to know that much about him in the book, but he’s a Hazara and Baba’s servant. Baba’s father adopted him after his parents were killed and he made friends with Baba. Ali suffers from Polio which rendered his right leg useless. In the end he dies because of a land mine.

Rahim Khan: He’s Baba’s best friend and also a friend of Amir. He’s very open-hearted and supports Amir and his abilities as a writer because Baba doesn’t know much about writing and is only interested in “real” skills. In the end Rahim Khan becomes very ill and Amir visits him a last time before he dies.

Soraya: She’s a very attractive young Afghan woman whom Amir gets to know in America. The two of them fall in love and marry. But Soraya’s father General Taheri is a very conservative man who sceptical when he first makes Amir’s acquaintance and so it takes much of Baba’s efforts to arrange the marriage.

Later Soraya and Amir want to have children but they can’t and you never get to know the reason for it. This bothers Soraya a lot because she wants to .....

The worst massacre ever happened was in 1997 when the Taliban took over some parts of the country, but Hazara troops had also executed many Taliban before.

By showing this conflict Khaled Hosseini probably wants to call attention to this problem which will as it seems today still exist for the next years if there’s no easing of tension.

But when the Pashtuns themselves are forced to migrate into America like Amir and his father are, they build their own Afghan community there which is quite reproducible because most of them were not prepared for leaving their home country and therefore couldn’t learn English before.

But it’s often criticised that people who migrate to another country build their own communities which you should really tolerate looking at this example given in the book and I’m positive everyone would do the same when being forced to live in a foreign country.

Friendship

Another very special role during the whole story does play the relation between Amir and Hassan. Although they know each other ever since their childhood there is a serious rivalry between both of them, at least from Amir’s point of view.

At first you think that he’s just a bad person because he often treats Hassan in a bad way, but later in the book you understand more and more about the backgrounds for his cruelty against Hassan. Amir is never understood by his father and he has the impression that Baba likes Hassan much more because he has the same characteristics Baba has.
Amir can’t stand the pressure anymore and makes Hassan look like a thief placing his watch in.....

On the internet I read that “The Kite Runner” has been accused of hindering Western understanding of the Taliban by portraying Taliban members as representatives of evil which I agree with because the book does really implicate that point of view, although it might only be partly true that all Taliban are evil.
Nevertheless I did really enjoy reading this “masterpiece” of a book and would highly recommend it to anyone else.

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