ja_mageia

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner is the most powerful fiction that I've read in many years.  The story of two boys growing up in Kabul in the 1970s, connected together yet unaware of the nature of that connection, until a single incident happens that has profound implications on both their lives.  This is a book about redemption.  The story-telling absolutely grabs you; the descriptions and word paintings that capture both the changing atmosphere of the country and the complex nature of human emotions.  The sharpest moments are the least expected, when Hosseini's writing is like a knife being twisted in the reader's body.  My own emotional reaction led to tears and sobs on several occasions when I just had to put the book down.  As one reviewer comments: "It is so powerful that for a long time after everything I read seemed bland."