Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner was first published in 2003. It tells the story of Amir, a young boy who grows up in Kabul, Afghanistan during the 1970s. The narrative is framed around Amir and his friend Hassan, and their relationship with each other as they grow up. At various points throughout the book, Amir struggles with issues of loyalty, friendship and guilt. A recurring theme of the novel is kites—Amir and Hassan fly kites together as children, they are attacked by an angry mob while flying a kite during the war, and Amir later sends Hassan his son’s old kite to remember him by. The novel has thirty-two chapters which vary in length from two pages to almost twenty-five pages long.
The Kite Runner was very well received when it was published; it won several awards including the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007. It has been adapted into a film (of the same name), which came out in 2007, and a stage play which premiered on Broadway in 2013.
