Kite runner book how many pages

Since its publication in Kite Runner has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic of contemporary literature, touching millions of readers, and launching the career of one of America's most treasured writers. The Kite Runner is the kind of poignant, heart-wrenching novel that will make you stay up late into the night reading and convince you to recommend it to all your friends. The story centers on the friendship of two boys in s Kabul and one awful event that changes the course of their lives.

Hosseini's stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s.

Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist.

But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. After establishing himself in America, Amir learns that the Taliban have murdered Hassan and his wife, raising questions about the fate of his son, Sohrab.

Spurred on by childhood guilt, Amir makes the difficult journey to Kabul, only to learn the boy has been enslaved by a former childhood bully who has become a prominent Taliban official. The price Amir must pay to recover the boy is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives.

The boys play a kite-flying game in winter; it is a huge competition, and is held every year. The strings are coated in tar and cut glass, and they deftly fly them so that their kite cuts the strings of other boys' kites. The winner is the last kite in the air. Amir wins the kite flying tournament in , and sends Hassan off to retrieve the last cut kite. Hassan, devoted and loyal to Amir, runs off, saying over his shoulder, 'For you, a thousand times over'.

Winning the tournament means everything to Amir, for Baba will love him now. But Amir witnesses something terrible when he is looking for Hassan after the running of the kite, but he does nothing, says nothing.

He discovers he is a coward, unable to help Hassan as he has always helped him. He chooses his father's attention and love over Hassan's loyalty and friendship. There were many things to love about this book. It begins in the 70s, when Amir is about 12, and follows him through to , about a year after September The Kite Runner reveals how relatively simple their lives were before the Russians entered the scene, and how the Taliban were welcomed at first because they got rid of the Russians.

Hosseini shows the human side of Afghanistan before the Russians came, then the Taliban. He paints a picture of Kabul full of mulberry and pomegranate trees, green grass, playing fields and parks, markets full of the spicy aroma of kabobs, young children carefree and happy, plus a tightly knit community.

For anyone who hasn't yet read the original novel or this graphic novel, I urge you to do so EDIT I have just re-read this wonderful little graphic novel and my thoughts remain the same! I think the illustrations are delightful and the story heartbreaking. I highly recommend The Kite Runner in both the novel form and this one and although graphic novels aren't really my "thing", I'm happy to have read this one :.

Kristina Horner. Just wow. This was definitely the most emotional graphic novel I've ever read, and while I loved it - it hit me pretty hard. Someday I will need to read the actual book version.

But wow. Maybe in awhile. The Kite Runner is one of my favorite novels; so I purchased a copy right away when I saw this graphic novel of the said book in a local bookstore here. I even watched the movie adaptation which was released on ; and applause to both the movie and this graphic novel because they followed the storyline of the book.

All the important events in the novel was not missed in these adaptations and that's what make them worthy to watch and read. If you are a fan of Khaled Hosseini, fond of graphic novels, or if you just love the story of Kite Runner, this is a must-have copy to be included in your collection. Okay, so I did not expect this to be a whirlwind of terror and emotions.

Most people know what a book is before going into it, but I'm like "Omg, that is a famous book I shall read it. So I saw this in the library and thought I'd try the graphic novel first It's really gritty and the story is dark and 'scuse me. I haven't ever read a graphic novel this dark. The art was also fantastic. And it was so emotional. But I didn't. Because Vulcan. Everyone in the new novel finds themself morally compromised at some point.

The most stark example of that, he says, "is the warlord — this sort of evil benevolent lord. And it's something I've seen in Afghanistan a lot, these charismatic, larger-than-life figures who people are simultaneously afraid of, in admiration of, dependent on. The central and most resonant line of the novel, though, is spoken not by a person but by a div , a demonic giant of Afghan folklore.

When a peasant's beloved son is taken by the creature, he sets out to rescue his child, knowing he will most likely be killed for his audacity. Instead, the div shows him his son playing happily with other children. The father has to decide whether to leave his boy there — happy and provided for — or to take him back to a harrowing and potentially short life in a village blighted by droughts.

Despondent, he accuses the div of cruelty. It replies: "When you have lived as long as I have, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same colour. Hosseini is 48 — not exactly Methuselan then, but old enough to look back on his first two novels and see a different writer: a writer for whom cruelty and benevolence were very much two different colours.

But if I were given a red pen now and I went back … I'd take that thing apart. He was similarly exacting with this novel's ending. It ends with an act of mercy: the div gives the man a potion that erases his memory, and with it, the pain of having lost his son.

It's this amazing gift — to treasure all those things that matter to us the most, that form our identity. But it's also very cruel because we relive those parts of our lives that are so painful.

I could see that if the reunion were to occur, it would occur on these terms and it wouldn't be the reunion we'd expect and perhaps the one we want. Among Hosseini's most compelling creations in the new novel is Nila Wahdati, an alcoholic poet. Hosseini was born in Kabul in , the first child of his diplomat father and teacher mother.

Nila came, he says, from the kind of parties he remembers his parents throwing while he was a teenager in the 70s, when a certain stratum of Kabul's middle class was undergoing Westernisation. Drinking freely, smoking. Nila is a creation from my memory of that kind of woman from that time and that place. It was, however, a place that he left when he was just 11 years old. His father's work took them to Paris, and then, when the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prevented them from returning home, they sought political asylum in the United States and settled in California.

Hosseini, aged 15, was plunged into a San Jose high school, speaking no English. I think it was a lot worse for my parents. My dad was a diplomat and my mum vice-principal of a high school and now she's a waitress at Denny's, working the graveyard shift, and my dad is a driving instructor.

He adds: "There's nothing wrong with those things, but it was a regauging of their place in life. In Kabul they knew everybody, but in California nobody cared. The family lived on welfare and, determined to ensure financial security, Hosseini resolved to become a doctor.