Khaled Hosseini's debut novel is the tender story of Amir, a young boy growing up in Afghanistan after the death of his mother.

Amir's best friend is Hassan, a fellow Muslim from a lower caste, who is constantly taunted by Amir's school friends. Amir is torn between his friendship with Hassan and pressure to conform to his school colleagues.

Cover: The Kite Runner

Amir's one ambition, together with Hassan, is to win the annual kite-fighting tournament.

Amir's kite needs to be the last one flying; Hassan is the kite runner, the best in all of Kabul, and his job is to be the first to find the last kite to fall.

Amir and Hassan win the Kite Runner competition, and Amir finally feels that he has earned the respect of his father. By the end of the day, however, neither young boy's life will be the same again.

Momentous events, both personal and political, mean the novel switches between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US. Having settled in America as an adult, Amir is called back to war-torn Afghanistan to rescue a child and make amends for what happened in the aftermath of the Kite Runner competition.

Hosseini manages to vividly evoke Afghanistan, both pre- and post-Taliban, and the young boy who is brutalised by members of the Taliban as the country itself is.

In the end, Amir returns to Kite Running to offer a glimmer of hope to the small boy and thus, we
hope, to Afghanistan too.

Gavin Bradbury

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The Kite Runner is now in hardback.