The Kite Runner

I have seen this book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni, in book stores and road side book sellers for a long time now, but never bothered to take a second look. Finally two weeks back I got myself involved in digitizing one of our hostel libraries (the list of books is now online and can be accessed here), and was surprised to come across some very interesting books and The Kite Runner was among them.

The book is about Afghanistan and is written in the first person. It talks about the life in Afghanistan from the monarchy before the soviet invasion to the present situation, and also about how the rest of the world reacts to all this. I was so engrossed by the book, the way it was written and the haunting images it throws up, that I began believing all of it, taking all this to be autobiographical. I was so relieved later to find out that this is indeed fiction. This is apparently, according to wikipedia, the first English novel written by an afghan, but the events in the book could very well have been true.