In his debut novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini tells the story of a writer who returns to his ravaged homeland of Afghanistan to rescue the son of his childhood friend. The protagonist, Amir, is the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant who spent his childhood close with his friend Hassan, the son of his father’s servant. But Amir betrays Hassan’s trust when Hassan is brutally beaten, which haunts him long until the mid ’90s as he establishes himself as a novelist in California. He finds out that Hassan and his wife have been murdered by the Taliban, and his son has become enslaved, and Amir must make a sacrifice to save his old friend’s child’s life. Not only is The Kite Runner an excellent character piece, but it’s presented against a backdrop of the turmoil of Afghanistan’s recent history, adding another layer to the story.

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