FROM THE BOOK JACKET:

"The Kite Runner" is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan nonetheless grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant, is a Hazara, member of a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade and Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

"The Kite Runner" is a novel about friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons-their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, "The Kite Runner" describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But with the devastation, Khaled Hosseini also gives us hope: through the novel’s faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows for redemption.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1965. He is the oldest of five children and his mother was a teacher of Farsi and History at a large girls high school in Kabul. In 1976, Khaled’s family was relocated to Paris, France, where his father was assigned a diplomatic post in the Afghan embassy. The assignment would return the Hosseini family in 1980, but by then Afghanistan had already witnessed a bloody communist coup and the Soviet invasion. Khaled’s family, instead, asked for and was granted political asylum in the U.S. He moved to San Jose, CA, with his family in 1980. He attended Santa Clara University and graduated from UC San Diego School of Medicine. He has been in practice as an internist since 1996. He is married, has two children (a boy and a girl, Haris and Farah). “The Kite Runner” is his first novel.

–khaledhosseini.com

HOW THE BOOK WAS SELECTED:

A panel of library staff developed a list of suggested book titles to use in the 2006 project. Ballots were then placed at all Lee County Library System locations, at the annual Lee County/Southwest Florida Reading Festival, and online for the public to make their selection.

Khaled Hosseini's “The Kite Runner” was a winner!  Thank you for voting, and please remember to cast a ballot in 2007 for our next One Book, One Community: Lee County Reads project.