Kite Runner

As words from the Koran reverberated through the room, I thought of the old story of Baba wrestling a black bear in Baluchistan. Baba had wrestled bears his whole life. Losing his young wife. Raising a son by himself. Leaving his beloved homeland, his watan. Poverty. Indignity. In the end, a bear had come that he couldn’t best. But even then, he had lost on his own terms

Kite Runner is a book about a father-son relationship backdropped by Afghanistan cultural tapestry. In it, we are introduced to Amir whose betrayal of his friend Hassan shaped & tortured his life. As the narrator leads deeper into the story, a picture is painted of the social stratification and oppression of the Hazara, how brotherly love and friendship is understood amongst Pashtuns, the geopolitical situation and later degradation of in Afganistan, and most fascinating, the culture of kite fighting.